India has among the highest rates of child malnutrition rates in the world, but these rates have been declining rapidly during the past decade. Between 2006 and 2014, stunting rates for children under five in India have declined from 48 to 38% (Global Nutrition Report, 2014). Despite this progress, child undernutrition rates in India are among the highest in the world, with nearly one-half of all children under 3?years of age being either underweight or stunted. India is still home to over 40 million stunted children and 17 million wasted children (Global Nutrition Report, 2014). In addition, the rates of decline have been highly variable across India's states. Some states, including Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Delhi, had large rates of reduction in stunting, but overall levels of undernutrition remained high because of high baseline rates. Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Jharkhand the situation has not changed significantly (Raykar et al., 2015). Similar variability is observed in the prevalence of anaemia rates as well, which range from 38% in Goa to 78% in Bihar (IIPS & Macro International, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Macro International, 2007).

Global evidence shows that child malnutrition is only weakly correlated with income. In fact, a quarter of Indian children from the top income quintile were stunted in 2006. Stunting is a marker for poor environmental, maternal and child factors, including poor sanitation, intrauterine growth restriction, micronutrient deficiencies, and sub-optimal infant and young child feeding practices. Current global recommendations for achieving 20% reduction in stunting and 61% reduction in severe wasting include delivery of a set of nutrition-specific interventions at 90% coverage level (Bhutta et al., 2013). These interventions span the continuum of care and include food and micronutrient supplements before and during pregnancy, counselling for initiation of breastfeeding and food and micronutrient supplementation for mothers in the newborn period and breastfeeding counselling, food and micronutrient supplementation along with routine immunization for the under five children (Fig. 1). Available data indicate that less than 50% of mothers and children in India are exposed to a majority of these interventions. The shortfall is greater for iron folic acid supplementation, food supplementation and minimum diet diversity, whereas exclusive breastfeeding and immunization have improved in recent years.