Nutrition security has been an important pillar of work at the Centre for Responsible Business (CRB) works on is nutrition security. Over the last few months, as the world finds itself in the throes of a humanitarian crises, the issue is being looked at with heightened eminence and urgency. The UN World Food Programme (WFP), Cargill India and CRB have been jointly implementing a project in Rajasthan that would make policies, people, processes and products, deliver valuable nutrition to vulnerable consumers.
It is well established and accepted that India’s nutrition targets as set under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 development agenda can only be achieved through an active engagement with private sector. Through the project, our endeavor is to exemplify public- private collaborative approaches to find effective and scalable models to availability and access to good nutrition. The organizations believe that believe that the model will help set an example of strong partnerships between state government, development sector and private actors to co-create approaches for addressing the problem of nutritional insecurity.
Nutrition is essential for human development; it is also central to the attainment of SDGs 2030 development agenda. Several strong constitutional provisions, legislative policies (National Nutrition Policy) and nutrition supplementation programmes (Integrated Child Development Services – ICDS, Mid-Day Meal Programme, Special Nutrition Program) are being implemented at the national and state level to address the challenge.
However, owing to the multi-factorial, multi-dimensional nature of the problem, the statistics on nutritional status indicate that India still has considerable ground to cover inorder to achieve its national targets and international commitments. As seen over the years, tackling the issue of nutrition demands a combination of multi-front and multi-stakeholder approach. It also involves a collaboration among the public and private players that is both granular with customized value additions to reach and impact at the micro/community level and macro that brings about coherence in policies and programme along with awareness generation towards a social behavioral change.