Diets, Malnutrition, And Disease: The Indian Experience

Despite India's rapid response to economic liberalization and impressive growth indicators since the 1990s, child malnutrition in the country has remained stubbornly high. Indeed, per capita calorie intake has declined, presenting a challenging scenario to policy planners and the academia alike. Diets, Malnutrition, and Disease attempts to resolve India's nutrition puzzle. It provides a comprehensive analysis of malnutrition, and meticulously explores India's dietary transition—a key feature of India's economic transformation. It analyses poverty nutrition traps, the relationship between multiple anthropometric failures among children, and their vulnerability to infectious diseases. It points out the abysmal performance of the Public Distribution System, and critiques its conversion into a (near universal) subsidy programme, the National Food Security Act. Links between affluence, obesity, and non-communicable diseases are unravelled, and the health policy challenges presented by increased mortality due to both communicable and non-communicable diseases are discussed.This volume throws light on the fact that health policy choices are marked by the irreversibility of growing affluence, lifestyle changes, and urbanization, and strongly advocates amelioration of child malnutrition through women's empowerment. The vision that emerges from the book illuminates successes and failures in designing health and nutrition policies and their implementation.