Abysmal Nutrition Barometer
Nutrition is a key issue, particularly when over 14 lakh children in the country are severely malnourished and 43 lakh are malnourished going by the government's admission in the Rajya Sabha a year back. Children's and women's health parameters are important in measuring a nation's socio-economic progress. Undernutrition is a health and human capital concern impacting the nation's future. Better nutrition leads to improved infant, child and maternal health and a stronger immune systems.
Recently, the Indian Nutrition Collaborative launched Poshan Innovation Platform (PIP) to strengthen nutrition delivery in partnership with the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. The platform could help improve the nutritional status of mothers and children below five years. The idea is to provide space to any organisation from startups to businesses and university incubators to civil society networks, to present their ground-breaking innovations in nutrition. The platform will also facilitate mentorship, seed funding and investment opportunities for scaling up innovations.
In the context of malnutrition, a UN report published in December 2023 suggests that over a billion people in India could not afford a healthy diet as per the 2021 figures. It is much more than the government's claim that 813 million people require food assistance. The report prepared by UN agencies claims that 74.1 per cent Indians were unable to afford health diet. Its proportion of undernourished population was 16.6 per cent in 2020-22. Percentage of people unable to afford a healthy diet in other countries is quite low, for instance, Iran at 30 per cent, Bangladesh 66 per cent and China at 11 per cent. Globally, 42.1 per cent people cannot afford health diet.
If this report is to be ignored because it was published by an international agency, then a news report in a prominent Marathi newspaper also reveals a similar picture or even worse. It says that between April 1, 2022 and December 31, 2023 in Maharashtra, 22,098 children died in their mother's womb due to being underweight. 2,064 mothers died in the same period.
If this is the situation in one state, which is considered to be progressive, one can imagine the status at the national level. At the national level, the government's National Family Health Survey 2021 (NFHS) also found that among the poorest 20 per cent homes, over 40 per cent women, including pregnant women, did not consume dairy products. About 50 per cent women and 40 per cent males in the country did not consume vitamin-a rich fruits.
In 2020-21 the Global Hunger Index ranked India at 101 out of 116 countries. That low ranking too was denied by the government calling it an erroneous measure of hunger with serious methodological issues showing a malafide intent.
Keeping the reports and index of international agencies and the government's denial over them aside, one thing for sure that from the NFHS 4 and 5 figures stunting has reduced from 38.4 per cent to 35.5 per cent and wasting has reduced from 21 to 19.3 per cent and underweight prevalence has reduced from 35.8 to 32.1 per cent. The government has restructured different schemes related to tackling malnutrition among the children and mothers to make them more effective. The government also launched in October 2023 a first ever protocol for identification and management of malnutrition in children.
But experts feel that still many gaps exist in the programmes and they need to be addressed. New apps like Poshan Tracker or PIP, no doubt, keep a watchful eye on the situation and help overcome the problem like lack of real-time malnutrition data. When this monitoring results in effective actions, then only they will matter. Though several actions have been taken, much more needs to be done.