By FGR bureau
Building nutritional resilience has become a top priority for us, especially in the continuum of POSHAN Maah, As Nutrition is both a maker and a marker of sustainable development, aligning to sustain nutrition-linked health determines our pledge and unwavering support in the uphill fight against the heightened inequities in food, health and nutrition outcomes through indigenous systems of Ayurveda, Sidha and Unani and assist in holistic Nutritional ecosystem.
India is one of the world’s largest food producer of items like milk, pulses, and ranks as the second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables, fruit and cotton, as per the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Despite the status, 14 per cent of India population is undernourished, according to ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2020’ report.
An actor-sector synergy is prelude to ‘converge’ health-nutrition prospects opening a window of opportunity towards realizing a new accomplishment of ‘Swasthya Bharat’. During PoSHAN Maah, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi rightly highlighted the maxim ‘Yatha Annam Tatha Mannam’ calling for mental and intellectual development as a direct proportion of quality of our food intake. The recent Memorandum of Understanding between Ministry of AYUSH and Ministry of Women and Child Development to integrate AYUSH in POSHAN Abhiyaan is a landmark opportunity to bridge the nutritional security at various echelons of the society, mobilizing the strengths of every associated stakeholder to fight malnutrition, inequalities, tackle nutritional deficiencies and ensure gender equity for the nearly 190 million undernourished people in India.
India Water Foundation, a nonprofit civil society has been mainstreaming approaches to Sampann health through environment-related nexus approaches since its inception. Carrying a deep sense of pride for associating with this momentous victory, our dedicated efforts and unwavering commitment to unify ‘Health-Nutrition’ nexus under a common platform has translated into fruition. Our communication letters to our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GoI and Ministry for Women and Child Development in the preceding weeks seeking ‘inter-ministerial convergence’ to integrate the mandate of ‘Health-Nutrition’ nexus at the ‘core’ and cross-sectoral line ministries at the ‘periphery’ has witnessed assuring and optimistic outcome.
As a ‘Good Samaritan of the society’, we are overwhelmed to render our service for the greater good and attach this milestone success as a sum of our tremendous outreach and observation gaining in-depth knowledge at the ground scenario, especially the Aspirational Districts of India. Achieving our goals should not stay off track, the MoU is a sine qua non for effective realization of health-nutrition inter-linkages, holistic integration of schemes, programmes and interwoven SDGs that is poised to enhance sustainable, inclusive and equitable society. Let us call for action to make this flagship vision a ‘Jan Andolan’ through ‘Jan Bhagidari’.
