1. NOURISH TO FLOURISH
REDUCING MALNUTRITION

2. MALNUT
RITION
GENDER
INEQUALITY
HUGE
LEAKAGES
IN WELFARE
SCHEMES
POVERTY
Lack of
awareness/education
among women
Translates to Child
malnutrition
WhereIndiaStands
58% children stunted in more than
100 districts
Less than 2.5% of world’s land to
feed 17.5% of world’s population
92% mothers in villages have never
heard the word Malnutrition
Mid May Meal Scheme to
provide cooked food to more
than 1.3 million students
Integrated Child
Development Scheme for
0-6 aged children and
pregnant women
United Nations
Children’s Fund for
health, education, water
& sanitation
Programmes currently Midway to fight Malnutrition

3. ISSUES AT THE MACROLEVELISSUES AT THE MICROLEVEL
• Sanitation is a big issue in villages, India
accounts for 56 % of open defecation.
Infection rates are powerfully associated
with such unsanitary conditions, leading
to an increased need to ingest nutrients
and fluids and a depressed appetite.
• Grave social disparities also aggravate the
problem in many villages where the
marginal groups are not given fair share
of food or health facilities.
• Gender disparity is also a big issue. Lack
of awareness and appropriate food intake
among mothers often results in
undernourishment of her children.
• The majority of subsidised food does not
reach its intended recipients due to large
leakages in the Public Distribution System.
• Coordination among various health and
food schemes is missing. As a result the
invested funds are not able to generate the
desired/intended results.
• 6.6 million tonnes run the risk of getting
spoiled every year due to lack of adequate
storage facilities.
• Focus of the Government programs is on
the quantity of grains not on the coverage
of the essential nutrients for balanced
health.

4. • The assumption that declining calorie
consumption implies increasing malnourishing is
unwarranted
• The general idea that decline in calorie
consumption represents increased poverty and ,
therefore increased hunger is misplaced.
• This is because the purchasing capacity of the
population of the people has risen considerably
• Malnutrition is primarily due to uninformed and
unhealthy consumption rather than hunger.
Malnutrition and its Linkages
Problems with the current schemes
• To provide grains to beneficiaries at highly subsidized prices who may already be consuming
adequate grains with malnutrition, reflecting lack of balanced diet is not a viable policy.
• Waste, leakage, theft and high delivery costs of the PDS schemes make them even more pointless
• A study indicated that in 2004-05, 70 % of the poor received no grain through the public
distribution system while the 70% of those who received were non-poor.
• Beneficiaries can buy grains at low prices from the PDS and sell it in the private market for cash at
a profit, thereby, not increasing the consumption of food among the target group.

5. Food Nutrition Clean Water Sustainable Environment
• Need to reorient agricultural
research and development
priorities to make them more
nutrition sensitive.
• Testing and remedial action
use of scientific techniques
like GIS can assist in
mapping, modelling and
decision-making.
• Awareness of the
entitlements to be increased
from the present below 20 %
to above 80 %
• Need to design more policies
targeted towards the 0-3 year
age group who are the most
vulnerable to nutrition
insults.
• Promote School Water Supply
Program by integrating
schemes like Sarva Siksha
Abhiyan,Swajaldhara
Programs for 6-14 age group.
• Target emancipation of
backward classes and FOCUS
groups who are often the
most affected
• Sustained supply of food
production and checks over
inflation in the prices of food
grains
• Awareness drives, increased
accountability and Exploring
simple, low cost technologies
• Reorient Anganwadi Kendras
on the line of ASHA system to
make them more effective

6. STRENGTHEN ICDS
EMPOWER
ANGANWADI KENDRAS
BRING IN CASH
TRANSFERS
How to Reorient Governmental Policies to fight the menace of Malnutrition
• Replace ready-to-eat food with locally cooked meals
• Change the diet pattern regularly to ensure wholesome food
• Increase the content of proteins, vitamins and minerals in the diet
• Ensure that health workers visit Anganwadi Kendras regularly
• Increase awareness and responsiveness of Anganwadi workers
• ‘Take home rations’ and nutritional counselling for younger
children
• Greatly minimizes the leakage along the distribution chain
• Eliminates the huge wastage and spoilage of grains.
• Empowers the beneficiaries by giving them the choice to buy
quality products.

7. IMPORT SECTOR
REFORMS
AGRICULTURAL LAND
HOLDINGS REFORMS
SUPPLY CHAIN
REFORMS
Reforms Agenda
• Availability of food needed
to promote good nutrition
depends on both domestic
production and imports
• Clearly, easing the imports
through a reduced tariff on
the essential component of
food inflation can greatly
alleviate their shortage in
the long run.
• Reform the laws on sales and
rental of agricultural land
• Ease of rentals and sales will
help to consolidate holdings
• Very necessary incentive for
making productivity
enhancing investments in
lands
• Development of contract -
farming, which can cut back
on all intermediaries and
minimize wastage
• Uninterrupted supply of
electricity at reasonable
prices and good transport
• 2nd Green revolution to
achieve food self-sufficiency
Supply Chain Reforms
and Reducing Barriers
Greater food production
and Direct Cash
Transfers
Greater nutritional
awareness and
responsiveness of
Anganwadi workers

8. Challenges
• Difficult to reform laws related to agricultural land holdings
in view of the tough resistance by large landowning farmers.
• Direct Cash transfers may not be the only panacea, the
target group might not use it on nutritious food
• In the dormant states , many Anganwadis have been
converted to feeding centres, supplementary nutrition
programmes are also functioning badly
• Direct cash transfer scheme also requires full financial
inclusion of more than 50 million Indians
The constant and sustained
increase in the purchasing power
capacity of the Indians does reflect
that poverty or incapacity may not
be the true causes of malnutrition.
Awareness and appropriate
nutritional coverage in the
governmental food schemes is.
Mitigation
Since more than 90 percent of
villages in India today have an
Anganwadi, these findings point to
a very important opportunity:
India already has a functional
country-wide infrastructure to
reach out to children under 6, most
susceptible to malnutrition.

9. References
• HUNGaMA -Fighting Hunger & Malnutrtion Survey Report : 2011
• An Uncertain Glory : India and its contrsdictions –Amrtya Sen and John Dreze
• Why Growth Matters: Jagdish N. Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya
• India An emerging giant : Arvind Panagariya
• Hunger and Malnutrition in India : Status, Causes and Cures (Association of Voluntary
Agencies for Rural Development)
• http://www.tradingeconomics.com/india/gdp-per-capita-ppp
• http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Nutrition
• Department of Food and Public Distribution http://dfpd.nic.in/