A high-level panel under Niti Aayog has drawn up a 10-point nutrition action plan that includes governance reforms in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for Kuposhan Mukt Bharat.
The national nutrition strategy, focuses on governance reforms, convergence of state or district implementation programmes, counselling and community-based monitoring to significantly reduce undernourishment in the country.
The aim is to ensure that states create customised state or district action plans to address local needs and challenges. This is especially relevant in view of enhanced resources available with the states, to prioritise focused interventions with a greater role for panchayats and urban local bodies.
The strategy enables states to make strategic choices through decentralised planning and local innovation, with accountability for nutrition outcomes.
The nutrition strategy envisages a framework under which the four proximate determinants of nutrition, uptake of health services, food, drinking water and sanitation and income and livelihoods, work together to accelerate decline of under-nutrition in India.
Currently, there is lack of real-time measurement of these determinants, which reduces the capacity for targeted action among the most vulnerable mothers and children.