WHY are Indian children so short? Over 40 percent of those 5 and under are stunted — meaning they are in the bottom 2 to 3 percent of the worldwide height distribution for their age and sex — and this rate has improved only modestly since the 1990s. Childhood malnutrition, which causes stunting, blights lives; millions will be permanently affected by poor health and cognitive deficits. You might assume that this is just about poverty, but here’s where the story gets strange: The average baby born in India is more likely to be stunted than the average baby in sub-Saharan Africa — even though the baby’s mother is more likely to survive the birth, and he or she will probably go on to live longer and be richer and more educated. Many explanations have been offered up for this “South Asian enigma.” Most recently, research reported in this newspaper has suggested that health problems associated with open defecation, which is more widespread in India than Africa, can cause children to suffer malnutrition even when they are well fed

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