#ChildhoodMatters Episode 8: India launches its national nutrition mission

Veena S Rao, retd IAS, former Secretary-DONER (Dept of North East Region) and currently advisor, Karnataka Nutrition Mission, Dr Rajan Sankar, Director, Nutrition Initiative, Tata Trusts and Anjali Nayyar, Senior Vice President, Global Health Strategies discuss the launch of the National Nutrition Mission by the Indian government with Biraj Swain, Newslaundry Consulting Editor and ICFJ Fellow.

They discuss the inter-departmental coordination and financing of the Rs 9,046 crore for the mission, its mandate, the hits and misses and implementation mechanism. Rao insists it is a malnutrition monitoring committee instead of a mission, considering there is no action plan backing the strategy.

Rao reminds the panel of the contribution of former Chief Justice of India  Justice MN Venkatachaliah in getting the NDA government’s attention to malnutrition while Anjali Nayyar sees the 2017 Mission being an extension of 2013 draft document led by the previous government. Dr Sankar feels the target of reducing stunting by 13 points in 5 years is hugely ambitious but not impossible. Rao emphasises the need for greater transparency, more information in public domain, and specific plan around the mission.

They also discuss the latest Global Nutrition Report 2017 and what it means for individual governments in general and India, in particular. They discuss the real purpose of such global aggregator reports and why the report was remiss in not mentioning the raging refugee crisis and the malnutrition linkages more emphatically.

Biraj closes the discussion with a powerful Irish proverb as a New Year wish for the audience, stay till the end for the proverb. Watch the full discussion here: