Swasth Bharat Sashakt Bharat

Overview

India has the second largest population in the world and this population is growing at the second highest rate of growth globally. India also has the youngest population in the world. However, paradoxically, India’s growth story is marked with the exceptionally high levels of hunger and malnutrition. Micronutrient malnutrition, which is also described as hidden hunger, results from vitamin and mineral deficiencies and often goes unnoticed, even by those affected. The harmful effects of vitamin and mineral deficiencies have gained considerable recognition in India and are now seen as a pressing public health challenge.

Multiple micronutrient deficiencies are rampant in India, and continue to be significant public health problems with serious consequences and a devastating impact on the health and the productivity of the population. In India, more than 57% of children suffer from sub-clinical Vitamin-A deficiency and 65.3 % of pre-school age children suffer from one or more symptoms of vitamin A deficiency.

The Government of India is committed to addressing the problem of micronutrient deficiencies. Vitamin A supplementation program for children under five has already National Edible Oil Fortification Project (India) been running for more than a decade but only 25% of children under five years old have received a dose of Vitamin A in the 6 months preceding the nationally representative National Family Health Survey III (2005-06). Also, there is no program to cover the children above 5 years, pregnant women, women in post-partum phase and adults.

Access to affordable, safe, and efficacious fortified foods is therefore a good option to eliminate micronutrient malnutrition and Fortification of edible oil with vitamin A and D, therefore, offers the most feasible intervention to combat micronutrient malnutrition. There lies merit in pursuing edible oil fortification in India given the mass penetration of the commodity and also its effectiveness in addressing some of the challenges related to nutrition security .

National Edible Oil Fortification Project

With this background, National Edible oil Fortification project was initiated to build consensus on fortification of edible oil as an industry-led voluntary initiative to counter micronutrient malnutrition by developing healthy and value-added products with nutritional benefits. The project entailed engagement with various stakeholders (business leaders, technical experts, nutritionists and policymakers) to create an effective multi-stakeholder national alliance on oil fortification (NAOF) to strengthen and extend the current portfolio of fortified edible oils in India as well to take forward the agenda of large scale fortification of edible oils.

Key Objectives

The key objectives of the project was to create an enabling environment for the edible oil Industry to

voluntarily fortify edible oils with vitamin A and D sold through commercial channels;
facilitate and convene technical and policy forums;
review the regulatory and policy framework and build consensus on edible oil fortification in the country;
create awareness about vitamin A and D deficiencies and benefits of fortification among stakeholders, especially the consumers and generate demand for fortified oil; this will be achieved by leveraging resources available with the government and private industry and
to provide technical assistance to the industry with regards to the process of fortification and the benefits fortification brings to the consumer.

To achieve these objective, broadly the project was constructed on three pillars - Advocacy; Awareness Creation and Technical Assistance.

Key Components

Advocacy : To build consensus and create an enabling environment for fortification in India and to further strengthen and extend the current portfolio of fortified edible oils on voluntary basis.
Awareness creation: Create awareness among consumers and build consensus around fortification as an Industry led initiative through organizing multistakeholder platform, media campaigns across the country.
Technical Assistance: To develop Quality Assurance and Quality Control protocols for fortification and provide training and assistance for adoption and sustainability of fortified food products.

Partnerships

Consumer Organisation

Orientation of consumer perception was of great significance for the project to create understanding among consumers about fortification, thereby increasing long term demand and market place for fortified products. Thus in partnership with Consumer Organizations, pan India consumer awareness campaign was undertaken to sensitize consumer across India about fortification and benefits of adopting fortified products in their regular diets.

This entailed engagement with consumers / consumer associations / civil society organization / advocacy groups, Industry & industry bodies, government, regulatory & standardized bodies, academic & research intuitions.
21 Workshops were organized across India covering Jaipur (Rajasthan), Panckula (Haryana), Mohali (Punjab), Chandigarh, Shimla (Himachal Pradesh),Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh),Ranchi (Jharkhand), Chennai(Tamil Nadu),Puducherry, Bengaluru (Karnataka), Palakkad(Kerala), Ahmedabad (Gujrat), Dehradun (Uttaranchal), Lucknow (Utter Pradesh), Agartala (Tripura), Gangtok (Sikkim), Guwahati (Assam), Kolkata (West Bengal), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Jammu, Srinagar ( J & K ). Patna (Bihar), Cuttack (Orrisa), Hyderabad (Telangana).
This was first of its kind initiative to educate consumers about the benefits of fortification, its importance for healthy life and simultaneously create demand for fortified products. Emphasis was laid on involvement of various government authorities to spread message on merits of adoption of food fortification at state level and implement fortification through various mass food distribution schemes to provide benefits to all the consumers.

Media

Media Campaign under the banner “Swasth Bharat Sashakt Bharat” was undertaken to create awareness and ascertain partnerships in driving edible oil fortification in India. Awareness campaign on social media was activated to create awareness amongst stakeholders via Facebook, Twitter & Blog about micronutrient deficiency and Introduced Food Fortification as a complementary Strategy to combat malnutrition. Cause videos highlighting the benefits of fortification were shared on social media for mass awareness.

Awareness was created through several messages / teaser (36 promos of 20 sec each for 55 days), tickers during market hours every day on identified TV channels, and vignette communications (30 promos of 25 seconds each for 100 days)were telecasted on Channels round the clock.
A Documentary titled: A Conscious Choice was also prepared featuring fortification as a vehicle to curtail malnutrition and its benefit to society at large, with global perspective and substantiated with Indian case studies of MP and Rajasthan and supported by the promos and bytes from industry, Government players. This documentary was aired twice on TV channels, social media and during various industry / consumer workshops organized at National and State level to spread awareness on fortification of edible oil.
These were supplemented with a Panel Discussions with eminent speakers, focused on the efforts undertaken by industry in the area of food fortification, Government initiatives in incentivizing fortification and orientation of consumers in accepting fortified food choices was organized a the studio and telecasted twice.

Way Forward

This project was a unique advocacy initiative around edible oil fortification and first of its kind where no incentives were provided to the food business players to either extend their fortified food basket or start fortifying products. The project focused on advocacy, and awareness programs to build a consensus on the merits of fortification of edible oils and encourage industry to move towards fortified oils. During the early start of the project, it was realized that while advocacy was focusing on the supply side of fortified oils, and engaging with the industry very closely, it was important to focus on the demand side and hence generate consumer awareness about fortified foods and oil in particular and the benefits of consumption of such foods. An experienced partner was engaged to connect with the consumers and create awareness and respond to various questions related to fortified foods put forth by the consumers. For the market for fortified foods and oil in this context to expand, it is crucial to have a strong and growing demand base.

It was evident that there have been positive developments at the industry end in taking up fortification more actively and expanding their portfolio as well as recognizing the need to move towards nutrient rich foods and make it available to consumers irrespective of socio economic status. On the consumer side, a breakthrough was achieved in terms of connecting with masses and starting the awareness campaigns and activities.

As relevant to any advocacy effort, it is important to create a platform to sustain the dialogues and initiatives undertaken with various stakeholders. Thus to enhance the potential impact of this project and retain the momentum of the past efforts, it is imperative to sustain these efforts through a continuous mode of engagement with all stakeholders.

A Nutrition Resource Center has been instituted within CII FACE to take forward business led initiatives on achieving nutrition security. This resource center will help take forward the food fortification dialogue to the states and engage with representatives from the Government who are active and passionate about making a difference in the nutritional and health outcomes of masses. Also, the centre will focus on issues related to nutrition imbalance (malnutrition & obesity) through, initiatives related to fortification of staples food (milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables), expanding the basket of nutrition rich high value food products, strengthening Agri-nutrition linkage (bio-fortification, etc) and creating consumer awareness about healthy and nutritious food and its relevance in the context of public health and nutrition.

CII Resource Centre – Business4Nutrition

Objective

Achieving nutrition security for the masses has been a challenge for India. This re-affirms the need for a multi-stakeholder response. Business has played an important role in contributing towards this objective with the public sector playing a pivotal role. The objectives of the Resource Centre are the following:

Strengthen policy advocacy on achieving nutritional security through large scale food fortification, improved access to nutrient dense and healthy foods, improving accessibility of such foods to all sections of the population, and giving consumers a wider choice.
Create an exclusive platform for industry to come forward and share their experience, lessons learnt and ideas on how to collaborate, partner with other stakeholders (government, development agencies, think-tank, experts and the like) and be heard on how they are contributing towards the larger goal of achieving nutritional security either through their business models and/or CSR initiatives.
Undertake projects on ground to improve nutritional and health standards of the people through a consortium approach bringing together technical experts, implementing partners, M&E specialists and others.

Membership

The Resource Centre will be led by an Advisory Group consisting of members from the industry, government, nutrition experts and developmental agencies. The broader membership will be open to various stakeholders including consumer organization and civil societies and experts who share a common understanding of nutritional security and ways to strengthen it.