Nutrition Smart Village Initiative:

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Why in the news?

“Nutrition Smart Village” was initiated to strengthen the Poshan Abhiyan.

• The objectives of the initiative are promoting nutritional awareness, education and behavioral change in rural areas involving farm women and school children, harnessing traditional knowledge through the local recipe to overcome malnutrition and implementing nutrition-sensitive agriculture through homestead agriculture and Nutri-garden.
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Key Highlights:

• This is the part of the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, to commemorate the 75th year of Independence of India.
• This initiative aims to reach out to 75 villages across India through the network of All India Coordinated Research Project on Women in Agriculture (AICRP-WIA).
• To achieve the goal of Malnutrition free villages, intensive awareness campaigns and field activities will be undertaken focusing on the concept of Nutri-village / Nutri-food / Nutri-diet/ Nutri-thali etc. for strengthening the Poshan Campaign.
•  Awareness among the women farmers will also be created about their legal rights in all walks of life.
• The products/tools/technologies developed by AICRP centers will be evaluated through multi-location trials.

About Poshan Abhigyan:

• POSHAN Abhiyaan is a multi-ministerial convergence mission with the vision to ensure attainment of malnutrition free India by 2022. 
• It targets to reduce levels of under-nutrition and other related problems by ensuring convergence of various nutrition related schemes.
•  Its aim is to ensure holistic development and adequate nutrition for pregnant women, mothers and children.
• POSHAN Abhiyaan Was Launched by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan in March 2018.

Implementation:

• Implementation strategy would be based on intense monitoring and Convergence Action Plan right up to the grass root level.
• POSHAN Abhiyaan was rolled out in three phases from 2017-18 to 2019-20.
•  POSHAN Abhiyaan targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.

What is scenario of India in Malnutrition

• In the year 2020, India was ranked 94th out of 107 countries.

Steps taken by Indian Government :

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme:

• It was launched in 1975.
• It is one of the world's largest and most unique outreach programs for early childhood care and development and covers all the districts and blocks in the country.

Mid-Day Meal Scheme: 

• It was started in 1995.
• Government has taken steps for rice fortification in all parts of the country to deal with nutritional deficiency among the women and children, with IIT-Kharagpur.

National Nutrition Mission (NNM):

• Ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030 is also the target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-2) of Zero Hunger.
• It aims to reduce anaemia among children, adolescent girls and women, each by 3 per cent per annum by 2022.

Additional Information:

What is GHI?

•  GHI is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger at the global, regional, and national levels.
• Global Hunger Index is based on four leading indicators:

Undernourishment, malnutrition, child growth rate and child mortality.

• It was Created in 2006 
• The GHI was initially published by the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Germany-based Welthungerhilfe. 
• In 2007, the Irish NGO Concern Worldwide also became a co-publisher of GHI
• In 2018, IFPRI stepped aside from its involvement in the project and the GHI became a joint project of Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.