According to UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2019 report, malnutrition was the primary reason behind 69 percent of deaths of children below the age of five in India. Further the report mentioned that every second child in India (<5 years) is affected by some form of malnutrition. This includes stunting with 35 percent of the children, wasting with 17 percent and 2 percent overweight. Among adults, 23% of women and 20% of men are considered undernourished in India. On the other hand, 21% of women and 19% of men are overweight or obese.

Reasons for prevalence of malnutrition in India

• Insufficient access to food: Though food grains yields in India have increased over the last two decades, people’s access to food grains have not increased proportionally due to population growth, poverty and inequality, and food wastage.
• Poverty: Poor families tend to select low-quality food that costs less impacting their nutrition profile.
• Infectious diseases: Poor sanitation practices and lack of access to quality healthcare facilities are the major causes for spread of infectious diseases such as measles, diarrhoea that make the children tend to lose their ability to absorb nutrients, leading to undernutrition.
• Maternal Health: One in five women are underweight in India. Women who are themselves undernourished or have a pregnancy at an early age, are at a greater risk of delivering low birth- weight babies, who are nutritionally disadvantaged right at birth.
• Socio-cultural factors: In most of the poor households, women and preschool children especially girls receive less food than the economically active male members. Rapid succession of pregnancies adversely affects the nutritional status of the mother.

To address the issue of malnutrition, the government has come up with a National Nutritional strategy that aims to reduce all forms of malnutrition by 2030, with a focus on the most vulnerable and critical age groups. National Nutrition Mission is an important component of the strategy. The mission aims to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively by 2022 and strive to achieve reduction in stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022). Broad contours of the approach adopted by the mission include:

• Inter-sectoral convergence for better service delivery: Ministry of Women and Child which ensures the convergence of various programmes Anganwadi Services, Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), Scheme for Adolescent Girls, Janani Suraksha Yojana (ISY), National Health Mission (NHM), Swachh-Bharat Mission, Public Distribution System (PDS) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
• Use of Information Communication technology (ICT): For real time growth monitoring and tracking of women and children. Also Community Mobilization and Behaviour Change & Communication, awareness Advocacy and Information Education Communication will be done.
• Intensified health and nutrition services for the first 1000 days: The 1,000 days from the start of pregnancy until the child’s second birthday offer a unique window of opportunity to shape healthier and more prosperous futures. The right nutrition during this 1,000 day window can have an enormous impact on a child’s ability to grow, learn, and rise out of poverty.
• Jan Andolan: The mission is envisaged to become a public movement by educating people on nutritional aspects and strengthening human resources.

An effective implementation of the strategy and the mission would help reduce the burden of malnutrition in India.