Lifting the Curse: Overcoming Persistent Undernutrition in India

With rapid economic growth and little progress in banishing undernutrition, India is an economic powerhouse and a nutritional weakling. This article surveys the others in this collection and concludes that such a situation represents a failure of governance at many levels. The article suggests a number of ways in which the state and civil society in India can strengthen the governance of nutrition in terms of capability, responsiveness and accountability. It also calls for more frequent data collection on nutrition service delivery and nutrition outcomes so that the state and civil society can sustain pressure on the need to improve nutrition. Finally, the outlines of a new research focus are described.