Biological, Programmatic and Sociopolitical Dimensions of Child Undernutrition in Three States in India

The recently developed India State Hunger Index 2008 highlights the continuing sorry state of hunger in India, and shows that children underweight makes the largest contribution to hunger index scores for most of India. In this article, we apply an assessment framework developed by the Mainstreaming Nutrition Initiative to understand three dimensions of child undernutrition in India: (1) the biological/epidemiological aspects of the nutrition situation, (2) the programmatic interventions and environment and (3) the sociopolitical environment for nutrition. We conduct this assessment for three states in India, each of which offers a distinct typology: (a) Bihar, an extremely poor northern state with high levels of undernutrition; (b) Karnataka, a southern state with high economic growth, but high child undernutrition rates; (c) Tamil Nadu, a southern state portrayed as an example of successful health and nutrition programming, but with rates of undernutrition that are still very high

Does greater autonomy among women provide the key to better child nutrition?

We examine the link between a mother’s autonomy - the freedom and ability to think, express, act and make decisions independently - and the nutritional status of her children. We design a novel statistical framework that accounts for cultural and traditional environment, to create a measure of maternal autonomy, a concept that has rarely been examined previously as a factor in children’s nutritional outcomes. Using data from the Third Round of the National Family Health Survey for India, supplemented with our qualitative survey, and accounting for “son preference” by limiting analysis to first-born children under 18 months of age, we document that maternal autonomy has a positive impact on the long-term nutritional status of rural children

Lockdown, demonetisation to CAA, farm laws: How hasty policies have killed Indians

The landmark American movie 12 Angry Men, released in 1957, holds an important lesson for contemporary India. It is an intense courtroom drama in which the fate of a young man charged with murdering his father depends on the verdict of a 12-member jury. As per the judge’s instructions, if there was any reasonable doubt that the accused may not have committed the crime, the jury must pronounce him not guilty

To Link or Not to Link - How Aadhaar Impacts the Delivery of Welfare

According to the Government of India, linking Aadhaar with the delivery of welfare schemes has saved nearly `2,73,093 crore till March 2022 due to, apparently, the removal of duplicate/fake beneficiaries and plugging of leakages, etc. What is the overall impact of Aadhaar on welfare delivery? We try to understand this through a case study of MGNREGA in Jharkhand. Surveying nearly 3,000 workers in eight villages in Jharkhand to assess both the costs and benefits of linking MGNREGA with Aadhaar, the paper focuses on its impact on errors of inclusion and exclusion

Measuring maternal autonomy and its effect on child nutrition in rural India

This paper examines the link between a mother’s autonomy - the freedom and ability to think, express, make decisions, and act independently - and the nutritional status of her children. We treat ‘autonomy’ as a latent variable and design a novel statistical framework to measure this. This method allows us to separate the direct associations of maternal and family characteristics in our model for nutrition, from their indirect associations that work through maternal autonomy. Using data from India, we explore the sensitivity of our estimates to endogeneity caused by sample selection in the presence of son preference. We find: (i) one standard deviation (SD) higher autonomy score is associated with a 0.16 SD higher Height-for-Age Z-scores (HAZ); and a (ii)10% lower prevalence of stunting (HAZ <-2 SD). The latter is equivalent to the prevention of approximately 300,000 children from stunting, indicating the important role of maternal autonomy

Does greater autonomy among women provide the key to better child nutrition?

We examine the link between a mother’s autonomy - the freedom and ability to think, express, act and make decisions independently - and the nutritional status of her children. We design a novel statistical framework that accounts for cultural and traditional environment, to create a measure of maternal autonomy, a concept that has rarely been examined previously as a factor in children’s nutritional outcomes. Using data from the Third Round of the National Family Health Survey for India, supplemented with our qualitative survey, and accounting for “son preference” by limiting analysis to first-born children under 18 months of age, we document that maternal autonomy has a positive impact on the long-term nutritional status of rural children. We find that one standard deviation increase in maternal autonomy score (i) is associated with a 10 percent reduction (representing 300,000 children) in the prevalence of stunting, and (ii) compensates for half of the estimated average decline in Height-for Age Zscores Indian children experience in the second six months of life. The findings underscore the importance of women’s empowerment in improving children’s nutrition during the critical first two years of life, a recognized “window of opportunity” for lifelong health and economic benefits

7.5 Crore Green Jobs? Assessing the Greenness of MGNREGA Work

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides ‘sustainable livelihoods’ or ‘green jobs’ to workers engaged in restoring the rural ecology while contributing to ‘sustainable rural development’. While the works constructed under NREGA possess tremendous potential to improve environmental indicators—rise in water levels, carbon dioxide sequestration, improvement in soil quality etc., it is unclear how much of that is actually happening. This study seeks to explore this question in this context. Firstly, the study finds that, on the whole, MGNREGA works are green and the works do ensure an overall improvement in environmental parameters. Secondly, several newly adopted activities (such as the construction of roads, buildings and wells) are actually not 'environmental' and hence, do not necessarily provide 'green jobs'. Despite the massive socio-economic contribution of these works, they can actually cause significant environmental damage. Therefore, it becomes important to balance the 'non-environmental' works with sufficient 'environmental' works. Finally, though this paper attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of MGNREGA works, it is limited by constraints of data availability, time and resources. However, it intends to push for a national effort to develop methodologies for inculcating environmental sensitivity into the planning, design, execution, utilisation and evaluation of MGNREGA works. It is hoped that these exercises would significantly contribute towards the ecological restoration of rural areas by the MGNREGA