Modi malnutrition quote unpalatable
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Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was on Thursday, under fire for his “malnutrition is due to fashion statements” remark during an interview with an American daily. The Wall Street Journal had quoted Mr Modi as saying, “Gujarat is... a middle-class state. The middle-class is more beauty conscious. If a mother tells her daughter to have milk, the daughter will argue saying ‘I won’t drink milk, I will get fat’.”
First to launch a salvo at him was minister for information and broadcasting Ambika Soni. “Mr Modi is not even sensitive towards women in Gujarat who support their families by sacrificing their food... What can be a more light statement than this?” Ms Soni asked. The medical fraternity also slammed Mr Modi. “Malnutrition is due to lack of education and poverty. The women that Mr Modi is talking about are perhaps just 0.01 per cent of the country’s total female population,” said Dr Boora Narsaiah, a laparoscopic and obesity surgeon at Hyderabad’s Star Hospital.
Also backing Dr Narsaiah’s view was plastic surgeon Dr Vishnu Swaroop. “He can’t make a blanket statement like this. I am a doctor who does nose jobs and facial corrections and there is nothing wrong in the need to look good. Also, these women are very few in number.” However, there were also voices from the other side of the argument. Dr Aparna Khulbey, a physician agrees with Mr Modi. “I know he is a prime ministerial candidate and he should not be loud like this, but young girls are increasingly going on crash diets.”
Keeping politics ahead of expert opinion was BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar who said, “Doctors are discussing the presence of anaemia in the not so poor sections of society. I pity the Congress because they are afraid of Mr Modi and that is why they criticise him even on non-political subjects.” Meanwhile, the third National Family Health Survey claims that over 55 per cent of Gujarati women in the 15-45 age group are anaemic.
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