Rajini, a two-year-old girl from Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh state, India, casts a dark shadow over a rising India, where millions of people have nothing or very less to eat.

The children in central India are thin, listless and sick because of malnutrition and if they survive, then they will grow up shorter and weaker.

India's economy has doubled between 1990 and 2005 and has become Asia's third largest economy. But despite that, India has failed to decrease its high prevalence of child malnutrition.

A government-supported survey, which was released last month, said that around 42 percent of children in India, aged five or below, are underweight. This is almost double the percentage of that in sub-Saharan Africa.

The statistic, which means 3,000 children dying daily due to illnesses related to poor diets, forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit last month that malnutrition was a national shame and was putting the health of the nation in jeopardy, Reuters reported.