-The Indian Express Traditional redistribution, which aims to deliver on intangibles like health and education, has ceded to a distinctive ‘New Welfarism’, where Centre is demonstrably providing tangible essentials to citizens The recently released fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) provides reliable and independent evidence to assess micro-development performance under this government. The survey covers many dimensions of health, nutrition, and the overall quality of lives. Here we focus...

-Scroll.in The National Family Health Survey revealed gains made in the last two decades have been reversed. The key indicators of health and nutrition from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey, conducted in 2019-’20, paint a disconcerting picture. Gains in Child nutrition, reflected in the previous rounds, conducted in 2005-’06 and 2015-’16, have been reversed in several states. With the pandemic and the economic crisis, nutritional indicators are likely...

-The Indian Express A complacent approach that assumes that all necessary measures, including the Poshan Abhiyan, are in place and the reversal in progress is only momentary will be a sure way to inflict a debilitating, irreversible impact on children’s nutrition and their well-being. Did child undernutrition in India worsen during the COVID-19 pandemic? The consensus is: yes, most likely. But did we do well in reducing child undernutrition before the lockdown?...

-The Hindu Reducing the burden of child undernutrition needs a policy goal — providing affordable access to quality food items The provisional verdict from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2019-20 factsheets on the burden of child undernutrition is not encouraging, with few exceptions. For the most part, this assessment has relied on the measure of a child’s anthropometry, i.e., children are defined as stunted, underweight or wasted...

-The Indian Express If India’s overwhelming goal is to become a $5 trillion economy within a few years, there is no reason to pay attention to children. But if it is development in the full sense of the term, then child development is paramount. Leaving aside two or three countries like Niger and Yemen, India has the highest proportion of underweight children in the world: a full 36 per cent according to...