Challenges in Tracking Nutrition Budget Outlays at the National and State Level in India
Background: While administrative logjams and capacity gaps in delivering nutrition specific and sensitive interventions in India are known, fiscal constraints to deliver these interventions remain under-researched. Most fiscal analytic work on nutrition that has been undertaken to date is number driven, missing reporting on operational challenges encountered while collating and reporting those numbers with accuracy.
Methods: We systematically documented the problems encountered while studying budget outlays for nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions at state-level (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh) for three financial years (2016-17 BE, 2015-16 RE and 2014-15 AE).
Results: Budgets of 20 centrally sponsored programmes across 9 Ministries/ Departments and more than 100 state-specific schemes were studied to arrive at nutrition budget at the state level, which was <2% for nutrition-specific interventions and varied across states for nutrition sensitive interventions. Complexities encountered while collecting figures included: (i) absence of a standard set of nutrition-specific and nutrition sensitive interventions for assessing nutrition budget outlay, (ii) nutrition interventions being spread across a large number of government programmes, as sub components of larger programmes, (iii) differential understanding of “nutrition” as seen by nutritionists and by the budget experts, and (iv) allocations for most interventions not available in the budget books across departments, and (v) lack of clarity on weightage for nutrition-sensitive interventions.
Conclusion: A common framework for multisector nutrition budget analyses, contextualized for India and agreed by experts (nutrition and budget alike) will be critical for strengthening an open evidence-based accountability measure for its tracking and adequacy.
