Scoring child nutrition in India measuring the performance of states.

Essential nutrition interventions are found to be strongly associated with lower under-nutrition levels in India. This is shown by constructing and comparing a child under-nutrition index and child nutrition score both of which use data from Indias latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3). The CUI indicates that 16 of the 28 states have high or very high levels of child under-nutrition. The CNS indicates that 24 states have poor or very poor performance in delivering essential nutrition interventions for children. The strongest association between the CUI and the CNS is that states with higher CNS tend to have lower CUI. Effective state governance systems need to prioritise programmes to scale up the coverage and equity of proven interventions in the fight against child under-nutrition in India.