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Aanganwadi worker Shakuntala Sharma is in charge of doling out the mid-day meal to around 50-60 children aged 3-6 in Devthala village, Chomu tehsil, Rajasthan.
“Children enjoy their meal of dal, chappati or rice, and sabzi in the afternoon. In the morning we make khichdi or upma for breakfast, and when they leave for home we give out little pouches of chana or peanuts,” she says, adding that pregnant mothers too are provided proper nutrition at this centre.
About two hours from Jaipur, the village is mainly inhabited by scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. And because it is relatively forward in development with good literacy levels and hardly any issues regarding water supply, electricity and drainage, it is home to an important nutrition survey carried out by Unicef. The child-focused organisation is assisting the Indian government in formulating its National Nutritional Policy. There is lack of data, for example, on the levels of Vitamin E, iron, folic acid and other essential components.
Shubham, a timid five-year-old boy at the aaganwadi says he eats here every day and finds the meals delicious. The others agree with him. Apart from two meals a day, the children are given supplementary tablets from time to time to overcome any nutritional deficiency (usually iron).
However, Shubham and his friends are the lucky ones. A majority of the country’s children do not get enough nutritional food. Nearly 50 per cent of girls aged 15-19 years are anaemic and almost 30 per cent adolescents have low BMI in rural India, according to previous surveys by Unicef. Pregnant mothers too lack proper nutrition.
Unicef wants to determine the nutrition level in the rural population to make a blueprint for the proposed policy. The survey has been completed in seven states and five more will be covered in the next four months. The sample size will be 1.2 lakh children aged 10-19.
“The percentage of children who are stunted has been reduced to 48 per cent since 2008 but there is no decline in the overall trend because it does not apply to all the nutritional deficiencies,” says Dr Jee-Hyun-Rah, a Unicef specialist.
The survey aims to generate the first ever national data on micro-nutrients. The Indian Council of Medical Research is planning to replicate it after three years to assist in various policies of the government.
The writer is a law student who interned with Business Line
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