Gandhinagar:
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, on a one-month state-wide yatra that kicks off his election campaign, has announced a government scheme that he says will fight malnutrition. Gujarat's malnutrition problem got global attention recently when Mr Modi attributed it to "figure-conscious" young girls watching their weight.
Under the new scheme, the Gujarat CM announced at a gathering of panchayat heads in Gandhinagar, 18,000 villages will get Rs 2 lakh each to combat malnutrition as part of the first phase of the scheme.
Mr Modi, who prides himself on the figures that Gujarat posts on development indices, ruffled many feathers last month when, in an interview to US Daily Wall Street Journal he was quoted as explaining the challenge of malnutrition in Gujarat thus: "Gujarat is by and large a vegetarian state. And secondly, Gujarat is also a middle-class state. The middle-class is more beauty conscious than health conscious - that is a challenge. If a mother tells her daughter to have milk, they'll have a fight. She'll tell her mother, 'I won't drink milk. I'll get fat'."
The context of the question reportedly was that according to latest government data available, about half of Gujarat's children under five are short for their age or have stunted growth. Mr Modi's answer had many both bewildered and angry; they pointed out that five-year-old girls anywhere were scarcely known to be figure-conscious.
He was slammed by the Congress, with Union minister Ambika Soni saying, "The Chief Minister who claims that he is the one of the best administrators in the world has given a childish and immature statement like this. He is not at all sensitive. The women of Gujarat sacrifice everything and work hard to raise their families, and 'he says that she is not eating because she is beauty conscious'."
In the same interview, Mr Modi had promised to fix the problem soon.
The BJP had stoutly dismissed all criticism then as part of a "Modi-phobia," in the words of party leader Muqtar Abbas Naqvi. But the party was clearly bitten to the quick at its star CM being found wanting - as part of celebrations to mark Mr Modi's 63rd birthday yesterday, BJP cadres and supporters in Surat distributed food and gifts to about 2,000 children from blind schools and orphanages. It was an effort, they said, to help the CM fight malnutrition.