New Delhi, Sept. 13 -- That India has perhaps the world's largest school meal programme is well known. Equally well known is that Tamil Nadu was the first state in both pre- and post-Independence India to start such an initiative. However, how many people know that, in 1946, the USA passed legislation to provide school lunches, explicitly framing feeding children as a measure of national security? In her book, Veena S Rao shares the fascinating insight that a large number of American men were found unfit for military service during World War II on account of physical deficiencies resulting from childhood malnutrition, and that this so alarmed Congress that it enacted the National School Lunch Act in 1946 as a measure of national security and to protect the future of the country and its people.
This book contains many such invaluable nuggets of information, and it is a must-read for everyone interested in the fields of human development, public health and nutrition, and public policy. It very clearly and categorically defines the intersectoral factors that determine strong human capital, placing nutrition in its rightful place as the foundation for all future development in health, education, skills, income and economic progress. She has also delved into the vast body of written works on the subject of public nutrition and has shared insightful details on the highly detrimental and long-term impact of colonial policies on India's human capital and the policy responses from Independence to the present day, highlighting what worked and what did not.
One of the most compelling parts of the book details the intersectoral, intergenerational strategy architected by the author that was implemented under the World Bank-funded Karnataka Multisectoral Nutrition Pilot Projects (KMNPP) in the two most backward blocks of the state, namely Chincholi in Gulbarga district and Devadurga in Raichur district. These pilots were led by the author, and readers will indeed be interested to learn that both the real-time data analysis within the projects, as well as the third-party Impact Assessment conducted by the National Institute of Nutrition in 2019, provide evidence of a significant improvement in the nutritional and health status of the target groups, as well as in behavioural change among and within families. These included a significant reduction in the incidence of wasting and underweight among 6-35-month-old children, an increase in the proportion of adolescent girls aged 11-18 years with "normal" weight, and an increase in mean pregnancy weight gain and mean birth weight of newborns.
These results are indeed commendable, and it is well worth studying the interventions and methodology and their actual implementation on the ground. The author explains that she implemented a mix of interventions that were essentially comprehensive, intergenerational and intersectoral in nature. These broadly followed the recommendations of the Coalition for Sustainable Nutrition Security in India, chaired by the late Professor M S Swaminathan in May 2010, with additional initiatives introduced by the author based on her long-term experience in this sector. Recognising that the projects were covering the most backward areas of the state, the KMNPP created IEC material that specifically targeted the challenges and concerns of the community there, rather than sharing general information that may have been prepared for the entire district or state. The provision of nutritious food under the projects to children, adolescent girls and pregnant mothers played a major role in breaking the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency, while the emphasis on involving the family, community, local bodies and governmental agencies successfully created a block-level homogeneous team that worked together to achieve the goals.
The author's assertion on the huge role that nutrition plays in the development of human capital and, consequently, in the nation's GDP needs to be taken very seriously. She has cogently presented how chronic intergenerational protein-calorie-micronutrient deficiency prevents children from achieving their complete cognitive and physical development, denying them the opportunity to reach their fullest learning potential. This translates into adolescents with low skills and earning capacity, and as adults, they remain trapped within the intergenerational cycle of poverty, malnutrition and poor health. Her firm insistence that the fundamental correlation between nutritional status and economic productivity must be taken into consideration by mainstream economists, and that public nutrition must enter the GDP debate, is a clarion call to everyone searching for answers on the way ahead for our human capital and demographic dividend. Readers are also provided with first-time information regarding the origin of the Poshan Abhiyaan led by Hon'ble Justice M N Venkatachaliah, details of stakeholder consultations, its announcement in the Budget on July 10, 2014, and its progression thereafter.
The book identifies the major root causes of India's chronic undernutrition and micronutrient deficiency and also recommends several practical actions to bridge the causal deficits.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.