Childhood malnutrition and lann intervention: case study of five state intervention areas in India

Higher prevalence of chronic malnutrition in vulnerable and backward pockets of India sets back the pace of inclusive growth in Indian economy. Indian villages consisting of marginalized population in states like West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan retards the aggregate improvement in development indicators. This is one major reason hindering the achievement of optimal well being at an equitable way. Welthungerhilfe and different non-profit organizations are doing interventions to reduce malnutrition among children and intergenerational transfer of malnutrition through community intervention. Present paper provides the situation analysis evidence of such project to assess the barriers to reduction in chronic malnutrition in order to design the programmatic intervention strategies in the study area. Baseline study was carried out in all the five intervention states as a cross-sectional sample survey covering 400 households with children under the age of two. Along with their socioeconomic and demographic information, data has been collected on morbidity, food security, water, sanitation, hygiene to assess the context. Local hunger Index is created to rank the study areas as per the value of chronic hunger. Different bivariate and multivariate analyses are done using STATA. Baseline study findings show higher prevalence of chronic hunger, moderate to high prevalence of chronic and acute malnutrition, higher food insecurity and significant knowledge-practice gap in childcare and feeding. Widespread multidimensional poverty is prevalent with huge scope to cure the situation with community led intervention and micro planning.