• A high-level panel under Niti Aayog has drawn up a 10-point nutrition action plan that includes governance reforms in line with the vision for “Kuposhan Mukta Bharat- Vision 2020”.
• The Government of Indian has approved setting up of the National Nutrition Mission.

About the National Nutrition Mission
• It would be executed with the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD)as the nodal ministry along with Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• Implementation and Target

•  The mission has a target to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, and low birth weight by 2 per cent per annum, and anaemia by 3 per cent annually.
•  It aims to focus mainly on children up to the age of 6 years, pregnant and lactating women, and adolescent girls.
•  It would also strive to achieve reduction in stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022).
•  It will be implemented in three phases: 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. 315 ‘high burden’ are to be covered in the first phase, 235 in next and the remaining in last.

• Features

•  NNM as an apex body will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition related interventions.
•  Mapping of various schemes contributing under malnutrition
•  ICT (Information and Communication Technology) based real time monitoring system
•  Incentivising states/UTs for meeting targets
•  Incentivising Anganwadi Workers (AWW) for using IT based tools and eliminating the need for registers
•  Measurement of height of children at Anganwadi Centres
•  Social Audits to track the health progress of the children
•  Setting-up Nutrition Resource Centres.Related Provisions

• Article 47 of the Constitution mentions the “duty of the state to raise the level of nutrition and the standard of living and to improve public health.
• The Copenhagen Consensus has identified twice several nutrition interventions as some of the most high-yielding of all possible development assessments.
• The National Nutrition Mission, recommended by the Prime Minister’s National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges in 2010, was launched in 2014, to address the problems of maternal and child under-nutrition in the country.
• The government recently laid down the National Health Policy, 2017, that also talks about Child & Adolescent health and interventions to address malnutrition and micronutrients deficiencies, among other issues.

National Nutrition Strategy Provisions

• Reducing all forms of malnutrition by the end of 2030.
• The nutrition strategy envisages a framework wherein the four proximate determinants of nutrition – uptake of health services, food, drinking water & sanitation and income & livelihoods – work together to accelerate decline of under nutrition in India.
• Decentralised Approach- With this the Strategy aims to strengthen the ownership of PRIs and urban local bodies over nutrition initiatives as subjects allocated to PRIs include those addressing the immediate and underlying determinants of undernutrition like sanitation and water.
• Governance reforms envisaged in the Strategy include: (i) convergence of state and district implementation plans for ICDS, NHM and Swachh Bharat, (ii) focus on the most vulnerable communities in districts with the highest levels of child malnutrition, and (iii) service delivery models based on evidence of impact.
• Nutrition Social Audits are to be undertaken to track the children and their health progress.
• National Nutrition Surveillance System- Undernourished endemic zones of the country will be mapped for identifying ‘high risk and vulnerable districts’ & the cases of severe under nutrition in children should be included in the routine disease reporting system.
• Institutional Arrangements- Institutional arrangements like the National Nutrition Mission Steering Group (NNMSG) and the Empowered Programme Committee (EPC) respectively under the chairpersonship of Minister and Secretary of Women and Children and the Secretary will be constituted.
• National Nutrition Mission- The Strategy aims to launch a National Nutrition Mission, similar to the National Health Mission. This is to enable integration of nutrition-related interventions cutting across sectors like women and child development, health, food and public distribution, sanitation, drinking water, and rural development.