Recent data shows that child nutrition in India remains uneven. According to the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21), 35.5% of children under five are stunted, 19.3% are wasted, and 32.1% are underweight, indicating persistent undernutrition. At the same time, the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 reports that every second Indian adolescent is either too short or too thin or overweight/obese. This suggests that India is dealing with a dual burden of both undernutrition and obesity.
This is not a new challenge, but a persistent one. Despite its scale, efforts to address it continue to evolve, with growing recognition of the need for more coordinated, long-term approaches across the development ecosystem.
Recently, what emerged from the Nutrition Conclave 2026, which brought together a room full of committed practitioners, educationists, funders, and policymakers, was a shared understanding of how stakeholders can move from compliance-driven approaches to more strategic and sustained contributions.
Let us begin with numbers that should make any funder pause. Malnutrition in all its forms, undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and obesity, costs the global economy an estimated $3.5 trillion annually. Yet nutrition consistently receives a fraction of health and development funding relative to its enormous burden. India has made significant progress through programmes such as POSHAN Abhiyaan and school meal initiatives. As these efforts expand, there is an opportunity to further strengthen coordination across financing streams. While multiple initiatives are underway, strengthening convergence, monitoring, and last-mile implementation remains an important area of focus.
The challenge is not only one of resources. It is one of design. The ecosystem that could deliver sustained nutrition outcomes — schools, anganwadis, communities, health systems — exists. There is an opportunity to further strengthen a coherent funding approach that positions nutrition as a long-term investment in human capital.
{{/usCountry}}The challenge is not only one of resources. It is one of design. The ecosystem that could deliver sustained nutrition outcomes — schools, anganwadis, communities, health systems — exists. There is an opportunity to further strengthen a coherent funding approach that positions nutrition as a long-term investment in human capital.
{{/usCountry}}Nutrition financing arrives through multiple streams: government budgets, corporate social responsibility, philanthropy, multilateral aid, and, increasingly, impact investment. Across these channels, funding is often structured around shorter project cycles, which may not be sufficient on their own to support sustained behaviour change and long-term outcomes. Changing what a child eats, what a mother believes about feeding, or what a school cook prioritises, requires years of consistent engagement. Short funding cycles can limit the continuity required for long-term behaviour change.
A further complication is visibility, or the lack of it. A significant portion of nutrition spending is embedded within other sectors: health systems, WASH programmes, agriculture initiatives. This ‘embedded’ nutrition investment can be difficult to track, attribute, and coordinate effectively. The result is a funding landscape that can lead to duplication, gaps, and missed opportunities for convergence. .
As international development finance observes structural realignment underway, there is a growing emphasis on working more closely with government systems rather than operating in parallel. This shift is increasingly seen as both practical and necessary for long-term impact. The key consideration is how corporate and philanthropic actors can continue to align their approaches to effectively operate within this framework.
India’s mandatory CSR framework, now over a decade old, has mobilised billions of rupees towards social causes. Yet within nutrition specifically, the bulk of this spending gravitates toward food distribution, mid-day meal sponsorships, and preventive health camps — interventions that are visible and measurable in the short term, making them easier to report on within standard CSR cycles. Areas that require longer-term engagement, such as changing nutrition-seeking behaviour among children and adolescents, building community-level nutrition literacy, investing in data systems, and strengthening the capacity of frontline implementers, present an opportunity for greater investment.
The opportunity here is significant. Corporate actors are increasingly well-positioned to complement existing efforts by supporting catalytic and long-term investments. Corporate, can fund the kinds of innovations and evidence-building that government programmes cannot easily absorb. They can support innovation and experimentation that may be more difficult within traditional funding structures. They can bridge the gap between what the data recommends and what the system currently delivers.
The Nutrition Conclave 2026, also highlighted an important aspect of CSR effectiveness. The effectiveness of CSR investment in nutrition is influenced by decision-making approaches and the perspectives brought to programme design. When sustainability leaders have lived experience in development, they understand that real change is non-linear, that behaviour shifts take time, and that the metrics that matter most are often the hardest to capture in a quarterly report.
One of the most powerful and increasingly important levers is data. Evidence-based advocacy has historically driven resource mobilisation in global health. The case for antiretroviral therapy, for oral rehydration therapy, for vitamin A supplementation, each rested on a foundation of rigorous data that made the investment case undeniable. Nutrition in schools and communities deserves the same evidentiary scaffolding.
This is a vision of data not merely as an accountability tool, but as connective tissue for the entire ecosystem. When evidence is built well and shared widely, it does not just attract funding, it choreographs collaboration. It tells government where the gaps are, tells implementers what is working, and tells funders where their resources will have the greatest leverage. In a field as complex and multi-stakeholder as school nutrition, this kind of shared intelligence infrastructure is not a luxury, but a necessary prerequisite.
There is a growing consensus amongst practitioners in the domain of nutrition that there is a necessity for increased funding, but it should be smarter funding, with longer time horizons, greater tolerance for complexity, genuine investment in data and learning, and a willingness to follow government systems rather than work around them.
For corporate foundations and CSR teams, the implication is direct. Compliance, while important, can be complemented by more strategic and long-term approaches. Given the scale of the nutrition challenge, what is needed is sustained contribution: strategic, long-term, evidence-driven, and aligned with systems-level change that will make a difference not just this year, but for the next generation of India’s children.
The opportunity now is for stakeholders across sectors to align resources and efforts with this shared ambition.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Meena Vaidyanathan, director, Niiti Consulting and Archana Sinha, CEO and co-founder, Nourishing Schools Foundation.