KTR also tagged the minister concerned and asked her to "gear up" for the job. File
Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao today took a dare on Twitter and said the state will see a "remarkable turnaround" in its malnutrition statistics over the next 18 months and asked the minister concerned to "gear up" for the job.
This came during a Twitter debate between KTR, son of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, and former Infosys director TV Mohandas Pai.
KTR on Wednesday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks on malnutrition in the latest episode of his monthly radio address Mann Ki Baat.
The Prime Minister had spoken on how music and bhajans were being used to fight malnutrition. He had described bhajan-kirtan events in Madhya Pradesh where nutrition experts spoke too.
Taking a dig, KTR tweeted, "Bhajan as a solution for Malnutrition! That too coming from PM! I seriously hope it was a teleprompter typo where Bhojan was typed in as Bhajan."
"India is ranked at 101/116 on the global hunger index & we need immediate focus & solution for malnutrition, not these comic capers," he added.
In a swift rebuttal, Mr Pai cited Telangana's malnutrition record and asked KTR to "show action, not point to others".
"@KTRTRS You are really a super star, since you have ruled Telangana for long, pl show us data on malnutrition in your state,what have you done over time. Pl show action,not point to others, data there in NFHS-5 @Sanju_Verma_ @vijaygajera @thehawkeyex," he tweeted.
The Telangana minister responded with "challenge accepted" and set an 18-month for the turnaround.
"Challenge accepted Mohan. In the next 18 months, you will see a remarkable turnaround in malnutrition stats of my state Mark my tweet; we will outdo both the 40% commission Govt in Karnataka & Rapist Remission Govt in Gujarat. @SatyavathiTRS Garu & @WCDTelangana let's gear up," he tweeted.
Satyavathi Rathod is the Telangana minister for welfare of women, children and Scheduled Tribes.
The National Family Health Survey 5 in 2020 had found that stunting and wasting prevalence in children in Telangana had increased by 5 percentage points between 2016 and 2020. Underweight and anaemia in children had increased by 4 percentage points and 9 percentage points, respectively, during this period, the survey had found.