Empowering communities to make pregnancy safer: An intervention in rural Andhra Pradesh

Recognizing that multiple factors are responsible for adverse pregnancy-related outcomes, a community-based intervention was implemented in Mominpet, in Andhra Pradesh, India in collaboration with the M.V. Foundation, a nongovernmental organization. The intervention focused on improving maternal health outcomes by raising awareness and building family and community support for pregnant women; involving pregnant women’s families, notably their husbands, in pregnancy-related care; and supporting pregnant women to access health services. This report describes the experience and outcomes of the intervention. In particular, it explores the extent to which the intervention was effective in increasing community support for safe motherhood on the one hand, and in improving pregnancy-related practices on the other. It describes the activities undertaken during the project period, and discusses outcomes at the level of the community, the family, and pregnant women based on qualitative and survey data. Finally, it suggests recommendations for policy and programs based on lessons learned from the intervention

Potentials, Experiences and Outcomes of a Comprehensive Community Based Programme to Address Malnutrition in Tribal India

This paper demonstrates the effect of an innovative community-based management programme on acute malnutrition among children under three years of age, through an observational longitudinal cohort study in tribal blocks in central-eastern India. The key components of the programme include child care through crèches, community mobilisation and systems strengthening to ensure better child feeding and caring practices and delivery of public health and nutrition services. For a cohort of 587 children, the increase in children in the non-wasting category is from 72% to 80% (p<0.001) and the reduction in Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) from 8% to 4% (p<0.005), a reduction of 46.6%. Normalcy is fairly well maintained at 89%. Among the severely wasted, 16% show no improvement, 49% moved into a moderate wasting category and 36% to normalcy over 4-6 months. Among the moderately wasted, 26% showed no improvement and 7% declined to a severely wasted category, and 67% moved to normalcy. The average Weight for Height Z-score (WHZ) for the cohort improved from -1.41 in the initial period to -1.13 in November (p<0.0001). This study suggests that this medium term strategy using a rights-based participatory approach for community based management of malnutrition may be comparatively effective by current WHO guidelines and other known community based interventions in terms of mortality, cost, degree and pace of improvements

Popular Actions, State Reactions: The Moral and Political Economy of Food in India

Can popular mobilisation activate accountability for hunger? In 2012, a group of researchers set out to explore this question through field research in four countries: Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Mozambique. The research was framed in ideas about a contemporary ‘moral economy’ – which when breached, would lead people to mobilise – either in the form of riots, or as movements for the right to food, thus activating state responses. This preliminary report is organised as follows: Section 2 briefly lays out the political economy context of this time. Section 3 elaborates on the impacts and political economy of food price volatility (FPV) and inflation, drawing upon general Indian data and academic debates. Having set the stage, Section 4 elaborates on the methods used in the study and the adaptation of methods to the Indian context. In Section 5 we place popular mobilisation in India in the context of the new social movements literature, to highlight how such mobilisation has been directed at the state. In particular, the features and mobilisation strategies of the Right to Food campaign are drawn out, to set the stage for the next two empirical sections that follow; the first one on popular mobilisation in Madhya Pradesh (Section 6) and the next on ration riots in West Bengal (Section 7). In Section 8 we trace the impact that these mobilisations had at national and state levels, drawing upon interviews with policymakers and activists. Bringing these sections together in Section 9, we revisit the core themes of the research: food price inflation, moral economy, popular mobilisation and policy responses. In the final Section 10 we conclude with observations about what these findings imply for the potential of popular mobilisation to elicit accountability for hunger from the state

Hunger, nutrition are worse than before lockdown. PDS must be universalised

In addition, to resuscitate demand, MGNREGA needs to be strengthened along with an urban employment programme. The effects of the lockdown and the resultant economic crisis continue to disproportionately impact the poor and informal sector workers. Since the lockdown, the Government of India (GoI) has announced relief packages under the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) and Atmanirbhar Bharat. However, numerous studies have shown their inadequacy. The Economist referred to India’s lockdown as the “stingiest”

National Food Security Act 2013: Moving from exclusion to inclusion

India has one of the lowest per capita daily supply of calories, protein and fat, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). One of the biggest contradictions of contemporary India is the unconscionably high rates of child malnutrition and the largest number of hungry people in the world, even as it emerged as one of the fastest growing economies. India has been a net exporter of foodgrains for more than a decade now and the government warehouses stock foodgrains at levels much higher than the required buffer norms. India has malnutrition levels almost double the levels of many countries in Africa. This problem needs a multi-sectoral approach including diet diversification, women's empowerment, education, health, safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. The National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, which covers two thirds of the Indian population with subsidised food and universal entitlements for women and children, is a tentative first step towards solving this problem. There is a need for speedy implementation along with steps to avoid exclusion of poor households, and setting up an independent grievance redressal mechanism.Â