Anganwadis, ICDS and PDS are huge government programmes meant to cater to the health and nutritional requirements of the poor. Yet 72.4% of urban poor children in Madhya Pradesh are underweight, 60.4% are undernourished and almost nine out of 10 are anaemic. The fifth and final part of this series on food security of the urban poor finds out just where these schemes are going wrong.

The entire burden of working, earning and providing food security to the family seems to be on women in urban slums. And yet the nutritional status of women is abysmal. The fourth in our series on food security of the urban poor.

A packet of glucose biscuits and tea is the standard breakfast for Kalpana’s three children in Indra Nagar basti. Popsicles and Kurkure are favourites with Lata’s son. The third in this series reveals how the urban lifestyle of migrant workers in slums forces children and adults to depend on low-nutrition, commercially packaged food that puts women and children at greater risk of malnutrition.

Before they migrated to the city, the Gond adivasis had a plentiful supply of fruit and vegetables that grew wild. Now they make do with street food, packaged food like biscuits and gutka to dull the hunger pangs. The second in this series looks at how migration impacts the food and nutritional status of the urban poor.

Malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh is much higher than the national averages for India. And MP’s urban poor are worst-affected. This is the first in a series of articles, researched as part of the Infochange Media Fellowships 2009, that analyse the food security of the urban poor who reside in the slums of Bhopal.