PART I: INTRODUCTION -- The Background -- Changing Calorie Consumption and Dietary Patterns -- PART II: ISSUES AND CONCERNS -- Does Gender still Determine Nutrition Status -- The Costs of Persisting Adult Under nutrition -- Why Child Under nutrition Persists in India -- Exploring Child Under nutrition Further: Best and Worst Case Scenarios -- The Additional Burden of Anaemia -- Do Nutrition Interventions Work in the Field? Reality Check -- Factoring in Climate Change -- PART III: IN SEARCH OF SOLUTIONS -- A Family Based Approach to Nutrition -- Making the ICDS Effective -- Lessons from International Experience -- PART IV: CONCLUSIONS -- Fast Tracking Nutritional Improvements in India.

The book revisits the causes of persisting undernutrition in India, but moves away from the usual focus on women and children to a broader view of the entire population. It estimates the economic losses resulting from ignoring undernutrition in the adult working population, and questions the current narrow focus of nutrition interventions, suggesting that a family-based approach may provide quicker results and long-term sustainability. It compares the best and worst performing states in the country to glean learnings from both successes and failures and emphasizes the need to hand over the ownership of nutrition outcomes from the state to the community and family for more sustainable results. The book is organized in three sections: Part 1 details the nutrition status of the population, regional variations in nutrition outcomes, and government response in terms of interventions. Part 2 reviews issues and concerns like gender discrimination, poor child nutrition status, ineffective implementation of government programmes in the field, and the possible impacts of emerging issues like climate change. Part 3 seeks solutions from both international and country experiences.