by Alex Tours

Created on: April 16, 2008

South Asia is a vast, mainly rural area, comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It is home to 1.4 billion people, more than 20% of the earth's population and is amongst the poorest regions of the world, containing half of all those living in poverty. With poverty, hunger often follows.

Hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food. Whilst western people's images of hunger are conditioned by the media's focus on starvation and famine, these images actually hide the much bigger issue which affects many more people. Under-nourishment and mineral or vitamin deficiencies lead to stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. These factors not only affect people's health but also their productivity and sense of hope. The constant search for food is draining of time and energy, meaning that there is less time for work and earning income: a difficult vicious circle to break free of, meaning pervasive and constant poverty and hunger.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka have all been riven by current or recent active conflict.

Whilst there is no conflict in Bangladesh, the country has the poorest economy in the region and continues to suffer from repeated natural disasters.

Bhutan is a landlocked country in the eastern Himalayas between India and China. In self-imposed isolation for centuries, it is still a mysterious kingdom and no internationally accepted statistical data is available but the government's policy stresses the achievement of equitable and sustainable development over economic growth.

The effects of these factors on the countries concerned are clear. Using one of the United Nations' indicators for measuring progress against their "Millennium Development Goals", that of "percentage of children under 5 moderately or severely underweight", Bangladesh and Nepal score appallingly with nearly 50%, Afghanistan and Pakistan do very badly with about 40%, with Sri Lanka the best of a sorry lot at 29%. In Bhutan, estimates from food agencies active in the country estimate that in 1999, 40% of children under 5 were stunted and nearly 20% underweight

India, home to nearly one-sixth of the world's population, is perhaps the success story in the region: since its independence it has banished famines and reduced poverty by more than half. However, the success journey is a long one and there is far to go: current statistics show that about half of 5-year-old children are underweight and a the population poverty rate is about one-third.

Nevertheless, India's story must surely be an encouragement to others in South Asia, even in the midst of conflict and natural disaster. Policies giving strong economic growth, such as Pakistan is also experiencing, have the potential to turn around these countries' long struggle with hunger.

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