Fortifying nutrition

Fortified rice will help reduce malnutrition

The government’s decision to supply fortified rice across the country in phases by 2024 is a welcome move to address malnutrition, which is defying all bids to mitigate it. Though the distribution of highly subsidised and, in some cases, free food grains to a sizable section of the population has managed to banish stark hunger and starvation deaths, undernourishment and imbalanced nutrition are still rampant and, in fact, growing. Going by the findings of the National Family Health Survey, the proportion of anaemic women in the 15-49 age group has gone up from 53 per cent in 2015-16 to 57