West Bengal adopted most elements of Poshan Abhiyan: Smriti Irani

 Union minister Smriti Irani on Monday said though West Bengal does t get involved in any central government program, it has opted most elements of Poshan Abhiyan.

"y have opted most of Poshan Abhiyan elements. y would t like to declare it and I am fine with it as long as we get job is done (implementation of Poshan Abhiyan)," she said. 'Poshan Abhiyan' is a Central government program launched with aim of reducing levels of stunting, undernutrition, anemia and low birth weight in children. It aims to achieve a reduction in stunting from 38.4 per cent, as per a National Family Health Survey of 2015-16, to 25 per cent by 2022.

Irani said she has been meeting chief ministers of different states to look into implementation of scheme. "We ask states to get on board. We tell states that it is t about politics but lives of women and children who are t political tools," she said. "West Bengal, which does t get involved in any of Government of India progammes me sure that we sat at least at officer-level if t at political level to bridge those gaps."

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minister was speaking at inaugural session of 'Towards a Malnutrition Free India: a rrn regional workshop on best practices and invations from Poshan Abhiyaan' organised by Observer Research Foundation. Irani said that on Monday she also met Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb to deliberate on effective ways to make state a leing one in fight against malnutrition among children and women.

She said greatest myths surrounding malnutrition are that it is a problem of poor and impacts only women and children living in rural parts of country. Union minister said it has been found that people do t realise that locally available foods are sufficient to take care of ir nutritional needs in many cases. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, who was also present at event, said that to tackle problem re is a need to lever techlogy, introduce real-time monitoring and capacity building. "Malnutrition is India's biggest challenge and it has been seen that ecomic cost of malnutrition is very very high," he said.

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