Now, desperately short of public money, India cannot afford either the magic bullets or the army to fire them. A health worker is supposed to visit Biharipur every month with inoculation kits, vitamins, iron supplements and contraceptive pills. But the worker has not come in half a year. You aim at hitting the target rather than developing the skills of the bowman. It's part of the problem with development in general.
Many Indian nutritionists resent the fact that such targets are set in Europe and North America.
C. Gopolan, India's most outspoken critic of the Unicef approach, is at one extreme. He believes donors have been taken in by the manufacturers of synthetic micronutrients who would stand to lose major markets if village diets were improved. In India, a subsidiary of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-LaRoche supplies 60 per cent of the synthetic vitamin A market. Slowly, though, India is looking to the example of southeastern Asia, where horticulture has become central to the food strategies of Thailand and Malaysia. The tropical southern states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are trying to cultivate red palm oil, which is rich in carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. There also is research into propagating carotene-rich pumpkins, carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes and cassava.