When Palak was found barely breathing buried under a mound of soil in an impoverished village in eastern India, doctors who treated the abandoned newborn girl knew that nursing her back to health would not be easy.
Two months on, Palak's tiny frame — weighing half of what it should for her age — lies crumpled in a bed in a malnutrition intensive care unit in Bihar state as she feebly cries for attention.
Despite India's economic boom over the last two decades, 46 percent of its children under age 5 are underweight, 48 percent are stunted and 25 percent are wasted, according to the latest government figures.