National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyaan)

About the scheme

POSHAN Abhiyaan (also known as National Nutrition Mission) is a flagship programme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development that aims to improve nutrition amongst children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.
Launched in 2018, it is a multi-ministerial convergence mission with the vision to ensure attainment of malnutrition free India by 2022.
The mission targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.
The mission also strives to achieve a reduction in Stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022).

Significance

Amongst India’s most serious yet marginally addressed development challenges is malnutrition, which contributes significantly to the country’s disease burden.
Even as National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4) data shows that the country’s malnutrition rates have gone down, half of all children from families in the lowest income quintile are still stunted (51 percent) or underweight (49 percent).
Today, India is home to the largest number of stunted children (46.6 million) and wasted children (25.5 million) in the world. More than a third of children under five suffer from stunting and wasting and 40% of children between one and four are anaemic.
According to the NFHS-4, over 50% of pregnant and non-pregnant women were found to be anaemic.

Poshan Maah

To ensure community mobilisation and bolster people’s participation, every year the month of September is celebrated as Rashtriya Poshan Maah under POSHAN Abhiyaan across the country.
The activities in the Poshan maah are focussed on Social Behavioural Change and Counselling (SBCC). The broad themes are: antenatal care, optimal breastfeeding (early and exclusive), complementary feeding, anaemia, growth monitoring, girls’ education, diet, right age of marriage, hygiene, and sanitation, eating healthy and food fortification.

Why in news?

According to Government figures, State governments and Union Territories utilised only 56% of the total funds released under the Poshan Abhiyan or Nutrition Mission in the past three years.
Out of a total amount of ₹5,312 crore disbursed by the Centre between financial years 2019 to 2021, a sum of ₹2,985 crore was utilised

News in detail

The five States and UTs with lowest utilisation were Arunachal Pradesh (25.14%), Puducherry (28.03%), Ladakh (31.2%), Punjab (33.62%) and Uttar Pradesh (33.73%).
The five States and UTs that made the most use of the funds were Nagaland (98.34%), Meghalaya (98.14%), Mizoram (94.22%), Sikkim (93.13%) and Dadra and Nagar Haveli (88.2%).
West Bengal, which has refused to adopt Poshan Abhiyan, was allocated ₹267 crore in the past three years but continued to have zero utilisation.
According to a survey conducted by States, the total number of “severely acute malnourished” children in the country was less than 15 lakh.

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