Here is a scary scenario. India is facing a severe nutrition insecurity. And, going at the current rate, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) says in a new policy note that the country can provide nutrition security to its population only by 2043.

“Countries such as China, Thailand, and Brazil have taken bold actions to successfully accelerate reductions in under-nutrition and are on track to reach the first millennium development goals (MDGs) on target, by the year 2015. But India will do so only in 2043 with its present pace of actions,” says a recently prepared policy note by the IFPRI, an international think-tank on agriculture.

Numerically calculating, it happens only after 28 years of passing the MDG deadline and 33 years from now that India can achieve such elusive dream as nutrition secure country, as it aims to become superpower.

The note mentions, “Under-nutrition continues to exert a physical, cognitive, and economic toll, costing India as much as three percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) per year.” If nothing else, this should make our growth-obsessed policymakers worried.

It is high time they gave a throught to the question. The prime minister’s national council on nutritional challenges has met just once last year after its formation in 2008. And, the draft approach paper of the 12th five-year plan has altogether ignored the issue of hunger. “If you look, hunger does not exist in the draft approach paper,” NC Saxena, a highly influential member of the national advisory council (NAC), said recently.

India’s young population is called as biggest asset, as the country’s 35 percent of population is below the age of 20. “But do we have nourished young population? This is a big question mark of rising India,” Dr Arun Gupta, member of the PM's National Council on Nutritional Challenges told Governance Now.

Terming India’s nutrition policy half-baked, IFPRI says that India has not made nutrition interventions effective at the ground level despite having schemes like health and nutrition programmes or schemes, such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme, Mid-Day Meals, Reproductive and Child Health Programme, and National Rural Health Mission.

“We are just big on words. Under-nourished children do not develop to the best potential,” added Gupta. “There are so many gaps in policy implementation,” he says.

“Even if India does direct nutrition interventions and scales-up implementation effectively, it will address only one-third of India’s under-nutrition burden,” said the policy note. The high growth state Gujarat has even worse nutritional problem. Gujarat (69.7 per cent children up to age 5 anaemic and 44.6 per cent malnourished) fares the worst in terms of overall hunger and malnutrition,” said the recent HDI report of the planning commission.

Healthcare and rights activist Dr Binayak Sen termed it as stable famine situation in an interview to Governance Now.

However, IFPRI calls for streamlining India’s agriculture sector. “It can maximise the potential of existing architectures across sectors to make them more pro-nutrition oriented and to promote meaningful coherence and convergence across sectors.”

The policy also noted India’s glaring gap in not linking agriculture to influence at large scale. “Global evidence suggests that many developing countries are exploiting these links (agriculture and nutrition) – but India seems to lag behind,” it held.

“India must also scale up its investments in integrated data systems (including health, nutrition, economic, and livelihoods) at regular intervals for diagnostics, problem solving, and tracking progress. Ignoring the agriculture–nutrition pathways in India will have enormous economic and social costs,” the note held.