Anganwadi workers: Key to strengthening nutrition in India

In a world dominated by technological marvels – from 3D printers to smart vehicles – access to a healthy, nutritious supply of food remains a persistent challenge worldwide. UNICEF’s latest report titled Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood sheds light on the alarming rate of nutrition deprivation across the world – with one in four children (or 181 million children) under the age of five living in severe food poverty globally. In fact, 20 countries account for 65% of the total number of children living in severe child food poverty, including India, Indonesia, Myanmar, China, Niger, Egypt, and Ethiopia.

To a great extent, the report states, the lack of access to nutritious food often stems from inequity, the climate crisis, inflation, and conflict – factors that undoubtedly impact those belonging to underserved communities disproportionately. However, despite these hardships, several nation-states such as Armenia, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, and India have also shown tremendous progress in reducing child food poverty by at least five percentage points over the past decade.

As for India, while we have made significant strides in recent years – as evidenced by the reduction in stunting (from 38.4% in 2015-16 to 35.5% in 2019-21, according to the National Family Health Survey-5), there remains a long road ahead of us to ensure that not a single child goes to bed hungry. For this, leveraging our robust network of the anganwadi ecosystem could play a pivotal role in eliminating inaccessibility to nutrition–especially among those in rural and underprivileged regions

While the global race against eliminating hunger and poverty has become a priority–manifested through Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2–the progress has been rather slow worldwide.

Although factors like adverse weather conditions, severe conflicts, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of access and knowledge of nutrition gravely impact rural and fragile settings, climatic shocks/the climate crisis and insufficient nutrition education, paired with the abundant access to ultra-processed foods have become the main drivers of child food poverty across socio-economic borders, impacting children belonging to both poor and non-poor households.

Additionally, the misconceptions and inaccurate beliefs regarding childhood nutrition persist across generations – making safe and adequate consumption of nutritious food a challenge due to a lack of nutrition education and guidance. It is also interesting to note that the twenty countries that house over two-thirds of the total children under severe child food poverty have strong cultural beliefs, thereby significantly impacting access to nutritious food among children. This issue is exacerbated when there is lack of accurate information and counselling on child feeding for parents and families. This isn’t just a challenge for poor families; it has been found that severe child poverty is experienced by children belonging to poor and non-poor households. In fact, more than half of the children living in severe child food poverty belong to households in the middle and two upper wealth quintiles.

Furthermore, patriarchal norms and practices in communities worldwide not only continue to impact a woman/mother’s decision to make autonomous decisions regarding food for their children but also impede their access to nutrition, education, and unrestricted health care – which massively constrain access to nutrition for both the mother and their children.

Despite these challenges, we have witnessed significant developments in the reduction of severe child food poverty, with countries like Nepal, Burkina Faso, the Gambia, and Guinea lowering the prevalence by over 10 percentage points. One of the most prominent factors that led to this significant progress, the report notes, is the collaborative efforts across the food, health, and social protection systems to enhance the procurement and supply of nutritious foods whilst improving knowledge and health services for children and mothers.

In addition to the provision of nutrition and nutrition education, providing feed for livestock, particularly in regions vulnerable to climatic shocks and conflict – such as in the case of Kenya – has further proven to facilitate a steady supply of milk production – thereby providing nutrition to children amidst uncertainties.

While we continue to make significant progress towards eradicating hunger and malnutrition in India, there remains substantial room for improvement, which could be resolved by proactively thrusting our collaborative efforts into combating chronic hunger. While central and state-level initiatives are imperative to drive these efforts and implement robust policies, we must utilise our existing network of nearly 14 lakh anganwadi centres to truly harness our capabilities.

Leveraging their expertise and on-ground presence, anganwadi workers and helpers play a critical role in altering the perspectives of communities on education and nutrition. With this in mind, their acquaintance with the on-ground reality (thanks to their personal clout with the local communities), could aid in not only disseminating nutrition education effectively but also translating the communities’ concerns as substantial insights, thereby providing an impetus for policymakers to strategise robust frameworks.

At the same time, investing in real-time data collection and monitoring is imperative to envision the scale of the issue and establish strengthened systems based on the evidence. For this, the pre-existing Poshan tracker, which enables real-time monitoring of all anganwadi centres, tracks home visits and enhances preschool education, plays a vital tool in building a robust database which could also be beneficial for national surveys to regularly monitor severe child food poverty and enable extensive research in tackling malnutrition.

As the world works towards finding solutions to the pressing challenge of chronic hunger and poverty, collective efforts, both at the global and national levels, are imminent in ensuring that we win this war against malnutrition, and build a sustained healthy society. Anganwadi centres, paired with the dedicated team of anganwadi workers and helpers play an increasingly important role in tackling this arduous challenge by enhancing nutrition, education, and health among children, while simultaneously building trust and comfort within the community – allowing children and their parents to comfortably navigate the adoption of a healthy lifestyle.

This article is authored by Archana Sinha, CEO and co-founder, Nourishing Schools Foundation.