The malnutrition blight: Why 40% of Gujarat kids under 5 are underweight
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue April 2025)The Census suggested that 7.8 million children should be enrolled in AWCs, but the CAG report showed only 4.1 million, indicating a 'massive gap'—between 2015-16 and 2022-23, some 3.7 million children (48.1 per cent) had missed out on the supplementary nutritional diet provided at anganwadis. Also, only 18.8 per cent of those in the 3-6 age group were enrolled in the AWCs for preschool education.advertisement
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AWCs offer a range of critical services in backward areas of India's rural and urban landscape. This is where children, lactating mothers, pregnant women and adolescent girls get supplementary nutrition; children gain access to key health services like vaccination; and mothers and families get educated on childcare, hygiene and nutrition. For children aged 3-6 years, preschool education is also offered. The anganwadis play a pivotal role in controlling malnutrition and stunting among growing children, so when a report highlights 48.1 per cent of them 'missing', it's shorthand for how poorly Gujarat is doing on a range of social and health indices.
And this is despite an array of schemes and budgetary allocations. The NITI Aayog's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) India Index 2023-24, released in July 2024, said that nearly 40 per cent of children in Gujarat under five are underweight or stunted, and over 38 per cent of the population is undernourished. The state also lags behind many peers in addressing the issue of hunger. Gujarat's performance is concerning as its SDG-2 score has dropped from 49 in 2018 to 41 in 2019, and now stabilised at 46 in 2023-24, suggesting limited progress in tackling malnutrition.'Tribal areas are the worst affected due to landscape and distance,' says social activist Neeta Hardikar, whose NGO Anandi has been working in the tribal regions of Gujarat to spread awareness about health, education and women's empowerment. 'In aspirational districts like Dahod, AWC numbers have not increased. But the biggest concern is the staff. Just two people per anganwadi is too little. Workers are stretched thin and unable to give quality attention to women and children.'The SDG Index also notes that 62.5 per cent of pregnant women aged 15-49 in Gujarat are anaemic, contributing to intergenerational malnutrition cycles. 'Intergenerational malnutrition requires persistent intervention. Initial findings of a recent study we did on food security across 30 households of each village in five talukas of Dahod district revealed that only two of the five food types prescribed for a nutritive diet show up on their plate on an average day,' says Hardikar. 'Allocated ration is not enough and does not reach intended beneficiaries.'advertisement
In the past four months, the Bhupendra Patel government has announced two new initiatives to counter malnutrition—the Mukhyamantri Paushtik Alpahar Yojana to provide protein-rich snacks to students in state-run and grant-in-aid schools with budgetary funds of Rs 607 crore annually; and the Nutrition Mission, with an allocation of Rs 75 crore to enhance obstetric and newborn care. The MoWCD submitted in the Lok Sabha in December 2024 that the proportion of stunted children in Gujarat dropped from 53.6 per cent in 2022 to 40.8 per cent in 2024; the share of underweight children fell from 23.1 to 21 per cent over the same period.Yet, there is a long way to go. Hardikar says schemes and allocations don't translate into results on the ground. 'Anganwadi workers are not trained for the complex job at hand. Understanding around contraception is still abysmally low. Child and maternal mortality from malnutrition is under-reported as the anganwadi and ASHA workers are in denial. Any discussion on the issue at the gram sabhas is only to demand explanations; we need constructive feedback sessions rather than a punitive process,' she says. 'Keeping up the morale of the anganwadi and ASHA workers is critical here.'advertisementSubscribe to India Today Magazine
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