Modi's budget cuts have hurt fight against malnutrition: Maneka Gandhi

October 19, 2015 20:17

India's main programme to fight child malnutrition has been hit by budget cuts that make it difficult to pay wages of millions of health workers, Cabinet minister Maneka Gandhi said in a rare public criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies.

Modi's government in February slashed social sector budgets to boost infrastructure spending in a bid to fasten the pace of economic recovery. States were asked to fill the gap from the larger share of federal taxes they receive from New Delhi.

Gandhi, the women and child welfare minister who oversees a scheme to feed more than 100 million poor people, said the current budget was only enough to pay salaries of her 2.7 million health workers until January. "We still have problems because our cut has still not been restored. Literally, it's a month-to-month suspense on whether we can meet wages," Gandhi said, adding, "It really calls for huge attention."

Gandhi said that even before the cuts the food programme was in urgent need of modernization, with lax supervision of health workers using training programmes not updated in the last four decades and the food on offer she described as "rubbish."

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