The proportion of underweight children in India might have declined from 45.1 per cent in 2005-6 to a historic low of 30.7 per cent last year, new provisional data from a survey conducted by the government and UNICEF shows.

Since 2005-6, there has been no new data on child and adult weights and heights, key in determining malnutrition, because of a delay in the National Family Health Survey, India’s official source of health data. Now back on track, new NFHS data will only be out towards the end of next year. In the interim, UNICEF and the union Ministry of Women and Child Development carried out a `Rapid Survey on Children’ in 2013-14, the key provisional data for which it made available. According to this survey, India’s proportion of children underweight fell from 45.1 per cent in 2005-6 to 30.1 per cent in 2013-14. This makes the decline in one indicator of child undernourishment the sharpest in the 25 years that such data has been collected.

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