POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY TN

to attaining the first Millennium Development Goal of halving the 1990s “extreme
poverty” rate by 2015. However, they assess that the developing world outside China will
not attain the MDG without a higher rate of poverty reduction than has been seen over
1981-2005. Two features in global poverty reduction are particularly notable: (i) there is
a marked “bunching up” in the global distribution of consumption just above our
international poverty line, and (ii) the poor are highly vulnerable to the steep rise in
international food and fuel prices since 2005. The main lessons for India and its states
are also that most people who migrated to the category of the non-poor are bunched just
above the poverty line and that they may be highly vulnerable to rising food and fuel
prices.
1.4 Current Status of Millennium Development Goals: Tamil Nadu
In examining the initial conditions regarding MDGs, it is relevant to take note of the
advice given by Jan Vandemoortele (2007) that ‘Global targets must be tailored to make
them context-sensitive ’. In this section we look at the status and targets of MDGsrelated
to hunger poverty, education, gender equality, and health in Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu seems to be well on its way to achieving the poverty related MDGs
for the state as a whole.
a. Hunger Poverty
The proportion of malnourished children (aged 0-5 years) was remarkably high - 48.4
percent in Tamil Nadu in 1990 as compared to 56.9 percent for all India, and this
decreased to 39 percent in 2000-01 which puts the state off-track in halving the
proportion of children suffering from hunger by 2015 (Table 1.11). 4 However, achieving
this goal would still leave roughly one quarter of Tamil Nadu’s children malnourished.
Even the decline in the proportion of malnourished children since 1990 has not led to any
substantial decrease in the absolute number of children in this category, due to
population growth.
More than half of the rural children (0-3 years) in Tamil Nadu (60.3 percent as
against the All India figure of 57.3 percent) in 1990 were underweight. The MDG calls
for reducing the proportion of underweight children to 30.1 by 2015. The projection
4 Child malnutrition can result from a number of causes. A late start in breastfeeding, and/or early termination of
breastfeeding increases the risk of infection in infants, leading to malnutrition. Supplementary but inadequate feeding
after weaning, illness, infections, and low maternal and birth weight can also lead to child malnourishment.
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