Emphasising on the need to give priority to ‘poshan abhiyan’, also called national nutrition mission, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday said convergence across various sectors can achieve the goal of making India free of malnutrition.

He said it was possible to reach out to 25 crore people last month due to convergence of various ministries which connected with the beneficiaries at the grassroot level.

“Poshan Abhiyan should be given a priority more than anything. In my opinion, no goal can be achieved without giving it a priority. Providing nutrition to everyone is the biggest challenge because nothing else matters if a child is malnourished,” he told PTI on the sidelines of an event organised to celebrate the culmination of Poshan Maah (National Nutrition Month).

The government has decided to observe every September as National Nutrition Month to mark the country’s fight against malnutrition.

“A convergence across various sectors can achieve the goal of making India malnutrition-free,” he said.

Addressing the gathering, Kumar said the biggest achievement of Poshan Abhiyan was being able to make it into a ‘Jan Andolan’ (people’s movement).

“We have been talking about it for the past 70 years. We have not be able to achieve our aims because we were not treating it a convergent programme.

“It helped in convergence of various ministries which connected to the grassroot level. Second achievement is that we presented an example through the public-private partnership. Third achievement is increase of awareness,” he said.

Over 500 awards were presented to various ministries, NGOs and anganwadi workers for their contribution during the national nutrition month.

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