The Gadchiroli experiment must be replicated across India to counter child malnutrition

Gadchiroli in eastern Maharashtra is known as the State’s lung because over a third of the district has forest cover. It is notorious for everything else — over half the population is extremely poor, the area faces the menace of naxalism, development hardly percolates to the bottom, it has among the highest child malnutrition rates in the country. The children do not get adequate and nutritious food. They are prone to sickness and stunted growth. However, some progress is now being registered on this front in Gadchiroli. Last October, the administration launched a special diet programme for malnourished children between the ages of six months and six years. Since then, nearly 4,000 have received a nutritious diet daily and are now considered healthy. The children are given Energy Dense Nutritious Food (EDNF), made of micro-nutrients that, along with regular food, help children gain weight. The programme was revived after a gap owing to COVID and now includes eight nutrient-dense Maharashtrian recipes. This is a creditable achievement in a country where over 30 lakh children are malnourished, with over half of them in the severely malnourished category. A majority of such children are in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The Gadchiroli experiment has to be replicated on a priority basis in the nation’s extremely poor districts. It needs to be integrated with the National Nutrition Mission (renamed Poshan Abhiyaan) aimed at reducing stunted growth of children because of lack of nourishment.

The daily supply of fortified rice and milk given by the Abhiyaan has to be supplemented with EDNF for better and quicker results. The anganwadis and the public distribution system need to coordinate to ensure that nutritious food reaches the children without fail. It was noticed that during the pandemic, the Government gave Take Home Rations to the poor only to find later that the food was consumed by the entire household. However, the Government’s real task is much more than distributing nutritious food; it is to ensure that pregnant mothers are themselves not malnourished. The problem of stunting and malnourishment starts with the mother. Girls living in poverty are malnourished and anaemic. They tend to be married off young and that increases the chances of their children being stunted. The reality is that one in five women of reproductive age is thin, with a body mass index of less than 18.5 kilos per square metre. That is severe malnutrition. Surveys reveal that non-nutritious food intake around the time of conception and early pregnancy largely results in foetal stunting. Food shortage is not the problem, the inability to access nutritious food is. The Poshan Abhiyaan does cater to pregnant women and lactating mothers, but its reach has to expand. The Ministries of Education, Food, Health and Child and Women’s Welfare need to focus on the intersection of low education in women, poverty and malnutrition to deal with the problem.