Fact check: Are “40 out of 100 children malnourished” in Gujarat?

Child malnutrition in Gujarat became the subject of a debate in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday (March 12, 2026). During a discussion on the budgetary demands of the Women and Child Development Department, with Congress MLA Jignesh Mevani raised an issue saying, “Despite this BJP government with more than 150 seats and 28 years of rule, only one figure comes on record, that 40 out of 100 children are malnourished. A very large section of them are tribals.”

Women and Child Development Minister Manisha Vakil responded that the Opposition was relying on figures from the National Family Health Survey (2019-21) and asked members to “update your knowledge”. 

Ms. Vakil told the Assembly that, according to the Poshan Tracker system, “only 11.4% of children in Gujarat” were malnourished as of January 2026, and said this showed a sharp decline in recent years.

But the Poshan Tracker and NFHS use different methods and cannot be directly compared. NFHS is a sample-based household survey conducted on a representative population, while the Poshan Tracker is a real-time monitoring system under Mission Poshan 2.0 that records growth data for children registered at anganwadi centres. 

“There are several issues in using Poshan Tracker data to counter NFHS figures. Poshan Tracker is supposed to be a complete census of children attending or at least enrolled at anganwadis, we do not know how complete the information is. NFHS data on the other hand is supposed to be representative of the entire population (including children who do not go to anganwadis),” said Economist Reetika Khera. 

The two datasets cover different populations and use different methods and their figures are not strictly comparable. 

“We do not know to what extent one can take Poshan Tracker data at face value. Anganwadi workers are under pressure to keep data entry on the Tracker updated and they experience all kinds of issues with the app and connectivity, so often they just enter some data, which may or may not reflect the child’s actual weight and height. Because there is so little transparency, we are not well placed to assess completeness of data and its reliability,” she added.

The latest publicly available Poshan Tracker data for July 2025 provides separate figures for stunting, wasting and underweight rather than a single combined malnutrition percentage. It shows that about 32.7% of children were stunted, 7.3% were wasted and 18.4% were underweight in Gujarat. Among 36 States and Union Territories, the State ranks 21st in stunting and 31st in both wasting and underweight, placing it in the poorest performers bracket among States in key malnutrition indicators.

NFHS-5 (2019-21) also remains the latest round of the nationally representative survey on health and nutrition released so far, and the results for NFHS-6 (scheduled for 2023-24) are yet to be published. 

In NFHS-5, 39% of children under the age of five in Gujarat were stunted (low height for age), 25.1% were wasted (low weight for height), and 39.7% were underweight (low weight for age). NFHS does not report a single overall malnutrition percentage and these indicators are widely used to assess child malnutrition. Similar levels were recorded in NFHS-4 (2015-16), when 38.5% of children were stunted, 26.4% were wasted and 39.3% were underweight.

Stunting and underweight levels are both close to 40%, so the statement that around “40 out of 100 children” are malnourished is consistent with NFHS findings, depending on which indicator is used.

Mr Mevani also said that “a large proportion of them belonged to tribal communities.” District level figures based on NFHS-5 show that several of the worst performing districts are among those identified as tribal districts by the Tribal Development Department of the Gujarat government.

In the case of stunting, four of the five worst affected districts: Dahod (55.3% stunted), Chhota Udaipur (48.6%), Narmada (47.2%) and Panchmahal (47.1%) are tribal districts.  Wasting shows a similar pattern, with The Dangs (40.9% wasted), Tapi (36.6%), Panchmahal (35.7%) and Sabarkantha (33.1%) also ranking among the highest, all of them tribal districts. 

In the case of underweight, all five of the worst affected districts are tribal districts: The Dangs (53.1% underweight), Dahod (53%), Narmada (52.8%), Panchmahal (51.9%) and Tapi (51.8%).

The claim that about 40% of children in Gujarat are malnourished is thus supported by NFHS-5 data which shows that stunting and underweight levels  are close to the claim. District level data also shows that several of the worst affected districts are tribal districts, pointing to a higher burden of malnutrition in tribal communities.

Published – March 15, 2026 07:00 am IST