Nutritional Security in India: An Overview of Basics, Status, Programmes and Prospects

Amit Anil Shahane¹* and Yashbir Singh Shivay²

¹College of Agriculture (CAU, Imphal), Kyrdemkulai, Ri-Bhoi District, Meghalaya, India
²Division of Agronomy, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India

*Corresponding Author: Amit Anil Shahane, College of Agriculture (CAU, Imphal), Kyrdemkulai, Ri-Bhoi District, Meghalaya, India

Received: May 19, 2023; Published: June 19, 2023

Abstract

India witnessed a 1.56 times increase in foodgrain production, a 2.46 times increase in milk production, and a 3.12 times increase in egg production in the last 2 decades; while the problem of malnutrition still exists. This extent of malnutrition is one of the important hurdles in achieving nutritional security for the Indian population. Nutrition security is more than just physical, social, and economical access to food. Nutritional security talks about the intake of safe and sufficient (quantity and quality) to meet their dietary need and food preference and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health services, and care. This overview aims to describe the status and prospects of malnutrition and nutritional security. Nutritional security is the outcome of 1) Modulating the production system (nutrition-sensitive agriculture), 2) Increasing outreach of processed and value-added products to the majority of the population and 3) affordable health care services to all. Equal emphasis on all these three components is essential and should be discussed in terms of the soil-plant-animal-human being system. Soil and plant have to play important role in achieving nutritional security considering the ultimate source of nutrients to animals and human beings. Therefore, all components should be treated equally rather than giving more emphasis only to the last component of nexus viz., human being.

Keywords: Nexus; Malnutrition; Nutritional Security; Hidden Hunger

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Citation

Citation: Amit Anil Shahane and Yashbir Singh Shivay. “Nutritional Security in India: An Overview of Basics, Status, Programmes and Prospects". Acta Scientific Agriculture 7.7 (2023): 25-30.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2023 Amit Anil Shahane and Yashbir Singh Shivay. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.