Ending hunger

Govt must address malnutrition

The Food and Agriculture Organization recently released the State of Food Security and Nutrition report as part of its effort to highlight issues like food insecurity and malnutrition, especially in the wake of global conflict, climatic vagaries, and economic slowdown. The report concludes that hunger in India declined from 16.6 per cent of the population in 2020-22 to 13.7 per cent in 2021-23. During 2004-06, about 21.4 per cent of the country’s population suffered from hunger and undernourishment. Notably, India’s progress comes at a time when the proportion of undernourished and hungry people has increased or remained stagnant globally. World hunger actually rose sharply from 2019 to 2021, followed by stagnation for the next three years. At this rate, 582 million people are expected to remain chronically undernourished in 2030, the majority of whom will be concentrated in Africa and South Asia. Globally, the prevalence of food insecurity is also expected to remain above pre-pandemic levels.

In India, the proportion of the population suffering from food insecurity, stunting, wasting, and low birth weight has gone down in recent years. For instance, between 2012 and 2022, the prevalence of stunting in children aged five and below declined by around 10 percentage points to 31.7 per cent, while the proportion of women suffering from anaemia recorded a slight decline. The proportion of children born with low birthweight also registered a marginal decline of around 2 percentage points to 27.4 per cent. At the same time, the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding among infants has gone up by 17 percentage points in a decade. Yet, India has the highest prevalence of wasting and anaemia in South Asia. Notably, there has been only a marginal increase in the central government’s budgetary outlay for interventions that improve nutritional outcomes. Although the government is distributing free food grain under the National Food Security Act to the eligible population, the outlay towards Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0 saw a decline from last year’s revised estimate. Clearly, the increased government focus on food security and nutrition, and developing climate resilient agri-systems will remain key to alleviating hunger.

Lack of affordability has been cited as one of the biggest barriers affecting nutritional access. In this respect, the report shows that the cost of a healthy diet has consistently increased in the country. The proportion of the population that is unable to afford a healthy diet remained at 55.6 per cent in 2022. However, at the same time, the incidence of obese and overweight children has increased, pointing to the double burden of malnutrition — the coexistence of undernutrition with obesity. The report suggests that the proportion of children who are overweight increased from 2.2 to 2.8 per cent between 2012 and 2022. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) also paints a similar picture, highlighting a significant rise in the percentage of overweight children, men, and women between 2015-16 (NFHS-4) and 2019-21 (NFHS-5). Thus, the challenge of providing nutrition will need to be addressed at multiple levels, including improving the availability of food items and containing the ill effects of processed food.