By Jonathan Allen

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - India needs to educate its people better and reduce the number working in agriculture if it is to fight widespread malnourishment, the India director of the U.N.'s World Food Programme said on Friday.

"Seven hundred million people dependent on agriculture is not a successful model," GianPietro Bordignon said in an interview in his New Delhi office.

"The agricultural sector is not progressing much. There is a large swathe of the population that is no more than subsistence farmers."

"Education, education, education," is the answer to reduce malnutrition, he added.

India's economy has begun to swell rapidly in recent years, but it is an essentially urban phenomenon. Most of the rural majority continue to live difficult lives, with low standards of health and education.

"Food can help you survive today, tomorrow, next week, but if you don't have good drinking water, good education, then the benefits will be lost," Bordignon said.

This has happened in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, states in the country's more developed south, which is dealing with malnutrition better than central and northern states, he said.

Last week, the government published its latest survey of the nation's health which showed that just under half of all infants are stunted and most women are anaemic due to long-term undernourishment.

India was listed as the 25th most malnourished country in the world in the Global Hunger Index published this month by the U.S.-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

And the government recently said that between a third and a half of food meant for the poor was being siphoned off each year from the corrupt Public Distribution System.

It is the largest such system in the world, feeding 400 million people, according to the WFP. The losses amount to billions of dollars each year.

INFANTS SUFFER

After the first six months or so of breastfeeding, millions of Indian infants get so little additional food that they begin to lose weight.

The prolonged malnourishment of infants makes them more vulnerable to deadly diseases and can result in lifelong damage.

The cycle can quickly repeat itself among the poorest communities where girls tend to marry and have their first child while still teenagers.

"You have very thin girls who go through pregnancy and delivery, and low-weight girls will have a low weight child, so the cycle goes on and on," Bordignon said.

"You ask a young tribal girl who is barely 15 or 16 who has two kids, she has no knowledge how to care for her children ... the bottom line is to start with a good education."

Better-educated people tend to earn more and be more aware of their rights. It also tends to reduce discrimination against women, who suffer far higher rates of malnutrition than men.

"In the poor households, women get the leftovers, they eat after the males have eaten," said J.K. Raman, WFP India's head of advocacy.

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