ABSTRACT
As the world counts down to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, countries are accelerating efforts to achieve nutrition targets, and for most, undernutrition has been the focus of commitments to action, wherein childhood stunting, wasting, anaemia, and low birth weight were prioritised. India is one of the countries on course to achieving the target of a 40% reduction in the number of stunted children, while it has not made progress towards achieving the wasting target. Our analysis of stunting success cases in four states in India indicates improvements in the coverage of health and nutrition interventions (ranging between 11% and 23% among different states), household conditions (22–47%), and maternal factors (15–30%) to be the primary contributors to stunting reduction. These changes became possible due to political and bureaucratic leadership, an engaged civil society, and multi-partner commitment, facilitated by actions focused on addressing poverty, food security, education, and health services. More recent evidence highlights the presence of new success cases in stunting reduction in large states in India and in accelerating the reach and coverage of nutrition interventions. In addition, evidence re-emphasises that linear growth faltering begins from birth to the age of three months, with substantially higher stunting at birth in South Asian countries, indicating the need to extend focus to pre-pregnancy and adolescence. India is poised to continue its strong stride of success in addressing undernutrition and become an exemplary country in the South Asia region if it could transfer learnings from its success states to the country and invest in pre-pregnancy and adolescent nutrition.
