World Bank Lends Indian Govt $200 Million Loan For National Nutrition Mission

The government’s ambitious National Nutrition Mission (NNM) recently received a $200 million loan from the World Bank. The amount is set to cover a large part of the government’s projected ₹9,046.17 crore spending on the scheme over the next three years.

National Nutrition Mission, also known as the POSHAN (PM’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment) Abhiyaan, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 8 this year in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan.

The programme aims to reduce conditions like malnutrition, stunting, and anaemia by creating synergy, ensuring better monitoring, and issuing alerts for timely action. It caters to the nutrition services provided to pregnant and lactating women as well as children under the age of three.

The programme involves gradually scaling-up interventions supported by the World Bank-assisted Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP) nationwide over a period of three years. Over ten crore people stand to be benefitted from it.

The project will boost investments in improving the capacities and skills of community nutrition workers and ICDS staff. It also involves strengthening citizen engagement and grievance redressal systems, instituting community mobilisation mechanisms, and establishing mobile technology-based tools for better monitoring and management.

The loan would help implement the first of the three phases of the programme, which involves scaling up interventions in 315 districts across the country. Of the total amount allocated to NNM, Rs 2,849.54 will be provided by the Centre while the states will contribute close to Rs 1,700 crore. The rest will be funded through multilateral agencies like the World Bank.

As per India Today, 38.4% children under five in India are currently stunted, 35.7% are underweight, and 58.4% are anaemic. Also, only about 50% of the children under the age of six months are exclusively breastfed in the country. One of the goals of the programme is to bring down stunting to 25% by 2022.