Health Priorities: Aligning Agriculture with Nutrition for Viksit Bharat

India’s goal of becoming Viksit Bharat by 2047 depends not only on GDP growth but also on a healthy and productive workforce. Nutrition is central to health, productivity, and long-term human capital formation.

Importance of Nutrition

• Nutrition and Productivity: Poor nutrition reduces physical and mental productivity. If the workforce is unhealthy, India’s development goals will be affected.
• Life-Course Approach: Nutrition affects an individual throughout life. A girl child with good nutrition is more likely to become a healthy adolescent, mother, and contributor to society. Maternal nutrition also affects the health of future generations.
• Amartya Sen’s Idea: Health and education are fundamental engines of economic growth. Therefore, India must treat nutrition as an investment in human capital.

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Epigenetics and Intergenerational Health

• Epigenetics refers to how environmental and lifestyle factors, including nutrition, influence gene expression.
• If a pregnant woman receives poor nutrition, the child may become vulnerable to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease later in life. Thus, today’s food choices can shape the health of future generations.

Changing Nutrition Challenge in India

• Earlier Challenge: Undernutrition: From 1947 to 2000, India focused mainly on undernutrition, anemia, and micronutrient deficiencies among women and children.
• Present Challenge: Obesity and NCDs
  • Urban India is now facing rising obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is not caused only by overeating; it can also be caused by poor-quality food.
  • Poor people may also suffer from obesity because healthy foods such as nuts, seeds, fish, fruits, and fiber-rich diets are often expensive.

Important Health Concepts

• Visceral Adiposity: Visceral adiposity refers to belly fat around internal organs. It is more dangerous than general fat because it increases the risk of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and metabolic disorders.
• Gut Microbiome: The gut contains trillions of bacteria known as the microbiome. These bacteria help regulate metabolism, immunity, vitamin production, and even mental health through the gut-brain connection.
• • Dietary fiber is essential for gut bacteria. But modern diets based on refined foods like maida reduce fiber intake, harming gut health.

Agriculture and Nutrition Link

• Problem of Rice-Wheat Monoculture:Due to MSP and procurement incentives, farmers often focus mainly on rice and wheat. This reduces crop diversity and therefore dietary diversity.
• Biofortification: Biofortification means improving the nutritional value of crops at the seed or genetic level so that the crop naturally contains higher nutrients.
  • Examples
    • Iron-rich bajra
    • Zinc-rich wheat
    • Vitamin A-rich carrot
• Food Fortification: Food fortification means adding vitamins or minerals externally to food items during processing.
  • Examples
    • Iodine in salt
    • Vitamin A in edible oil
    • Iron and folic acid in food products
• Declining Nutritional Quality of Crops: Crop nutrition is affected by:
  • Poor soil health
  • Contaminated or insufficient water
  • Poor seed quality
  • Climate change and rising CO₂ levels

SEHAT Initiative

• SEHAT stands for ‘Science Excellence for Health through Agriculture Transformation’.
• It is an initiative involving the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and Indian Council of Medical Research to align agriculture with health outcomes.
• Five Action Areas
  • Biofortification
  • Integrated farming systems
  • Agri-nutrition for non-communicable diseases
  • One Health approach
  • Farmers’ health

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One Health Approach: The One Health approach recognises that the health of humans, animals, and the environment is interconnected. Human health cannot be protected if animal and environmental health are ignored.

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