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India's economic progress is overshadowed by a persistent malnutrition crisis, marked by high rates of stunting, wasting, and anaemia, especially among marginalized communities. Despite calorie sufficiency, a lack of dietary diversity fuels this challenge. A multi-sectoral approach, reimagining food programs, empowering women, and leveraging data, is crucial to achieve a nutrition-secure future.
India’s economic rise is celebrated worldwide, yet beneath the headlines lies a quieter crisis - malnutrition. This is not merely a health issue, but a multidimensional challenge tied to poverty, agriculture, dietary practices, social inequity and gender norms. Marginalised groups - Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, migrant labourers, and the urban poor - bear a disproportionate burden. In tribal hamlets, rural pockets, urban slums, or migrant camps, one sees frail children, anaemic mothers, and families surviving on smaller plates.
NFHS-5 data outlines the status on-ground: more than one in three children is stunted, nearly one in five is wasted, and over half of women are anaemic. These are not just statistics; they are diminished lives. Malnutrition is not only a dietary challenge but also a manifestation of structural inequities. Economic growth must be accompanied by targeted efforts to achieve a nutrition-secure India. Every human, especially the most vulnerable, must have access to diverse, safe, and adequate food, or the nation risks perpetuating cycles of poverty and inequality.
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Wasting and underweight persist because they are symptoms of both chronic inequities like poverty, gender, food systems and acute shocks such as illness, climate crisis, and disasters. Stunting also particularly affects the underserved. It begins in the womb, when poor women from underprivileged backgrounds struggle through pregnancy with heavy workloads, fewer meals, and inadequate care. Their children are born at a disadvantage, with impaired growth, cognition, and lifetime earnings.
Anaemia, another silent crisis, weakens immunity, drains energy, raises maternal risks, and impairs productivity. Today, 67% of children under five and nearly 60% of adolescent girls are anaemic, fuelling an intergenerational cycle of deprivation.
India faces a nutrition paradox between calorie sufficiency on the one hand and quality of diet diversity on the other. While the former is affordable and accessible through the Public Distribution System, the latter has cost issues. The country produces record harvests of rice and wheat, yet diets remain monotonous. For the poor, affording pulses, vegetables, fruits, and animal-based proteins can be challenging. The mismatch between agriculture and nutrition is stark, resulting in gaps in a much required diverse diet at a household level. Without a balanced and diversified food plate for everyone, India will continue to suffer nutrition deadlock. India has several schemes to address hunger and inadequate food intake: The Take-Home Rations and Hot Cooked Meals provided to young children through the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and POSHAN 2.0, Mid-Day Meals (MDM) for school children, and the Public Distribution System (PDS). Add to these, fortified foods, cash transfers, and digital dashboards. Looking ahead, more nutrition-centric interventions to build on existing food-focused ones can strengthen India’s status.
What can we build on? First, reimagining the PDS, MDM, and the ICDS by including quality foods like pulses, vegetables, Vitamin C rich-fruits, milk, and eggs. Second, prioritising the first 1,000 days, ensuring pregnant women and infants receive nutritious meals, counselling, and maternity benefits that extend to the informal workforce. Third, integrating nutrition with sanitation, safe water, and immunisation to break the infection–undernutrition cycle. Fourth, designing tailored approaches for underprivileged communities, with provision of portable rations, culturally preferred foods, and community kitchens. Fifth, reforming agriculture and horticulture to reward farmers for producing foods that nourish, such as pulses, millets, vegetables, and fruits while improving affordable local markets. Sixth, investing in modern storage and cold chains to reduce perishability of food through technology-based solutions. However, above all, the empowerment of women and the sensitisation of men are vital scaffolds for this change. When women control land, income, and decisions, household nutrition improves. Importantly, community ownership, through monitoring, feedback, support for frontline workers, and Panchayat engagement, can strengthen local ecosystems.
India has witnessed a declining trend in the prevalence of both chronic and acute forms of malnutrition; however, the pace has been incremental. For a quantum shift, an effective response to malnutrition requires a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach, accelerating a shift towards diverse and nutrient-rich food. Collaborative thinking between sectors and disciplines like economics which points to social safety nets; public health that stresses disease prevention and primary care; agriculture that highlights diet diversity and sustainability; education and gender studies which emphasise empowerment and literacy; political science that underlines accountability; and sociology which grounds interventions in cultural contexts, can boost inter-disciplinary thought leadership. Countries like Peru, Vietnam, and Ethiopia show that an intergenerational problems like stunting decline rapidly when such approaches converge. While underweight and wasting remain persistent challenges in India, especially among last-mile populations, stunting- a chronic condition reflecting long-term nutritional and social deprivation - is harder to reverse. Yet, with early-life interventions before the age of two, it can be prevented and reduced at the population level through long-term, multi-sectoral policies.
Boosting India’s nutrition status requires a bold approach, placing the availability of diverse diets at the centre of agriculture, welfare, and health policy. It is an investment in India’s demographic dividend, reducing healthcare costs, and building economic resilience. Malnutrition is not inevitable but ending it will call for learning from past experiences and the application of scientific evidence in practice. It also calls for adopting appropriate innovations, smart use of data, including artificial intelligence, that enhances precision in public health nutrition
Paramount to any transformation would be decentralised governance, community leadership, and trusted partnerships. The true measure of India’s progress will be whether every child, regardless of their background, has a fair chance to grow, learn, and thrive.
— Jayeeta Chowdhury, Head - Nutrition, Tata Trusts
The article was first published on 1 October, 2025 on Times of India.
