Mumbai: Social Activist Launches 'Poshan Pack' To Combat Malnutrition Through Citizen Participation In Low-Budget Initiative

Mumbai: A Mumbai-based social activist has launched a novel initiative to solve the problem of malnutrition by mass movement of citizens by turning daily routine into impact at a very low budget. Poshan Pack is a uniquely Indian solution calling on people to donate fruits and vegetables to needy people in a bid to enhance the nutrition among the underprivileged people offering them a healthy life.

The month of September is observed as Poshan Maah by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to improve ground-level nutrition outcomes in the country. While the government is working to curb the dimension of malnutrition among children and adults, a social initiative has started from the vegetable markets of Mumbai to fight this health issue.

Through Posan Pack, Savitha Rao, the founder of India Positive Citizen, is running a call to action by inviting citizens to buy some healthy vegetables when they go shopping for vegetables and to give them to someone who needs it but is unable to afford it.

Posters requesting people to join this decentralised initiative have been put up in vegetable markets in Vile Parle (E) and vegetable vendors are also supporting this initiative by putting up these posters on their carts. The idea is to provide nutrition to needy families at a very affordable cost by attracting people to join this initiative and create an impact just during their routine shopping spree at the market.

Rao said, “Government provides free food grains to needy people which solves the issue of hunger but it cannot fulfil the nutritional needs completely. There are entire families which are facing nutritional challenges. They are earning enough to purchase dal but they cannot afford to add nutrition-rich vegetables like spinach and fenugreek to it. Especially for the working class, it becomes more necessary.”

In her book India Positive Citizen, Rao had listed out ideas to solve issues related to different demographics and one of the ideas to fight malnutrition was Poshan Pack. After the book was received well by the readers, she started the initiative by giving vegetables to an elderly homeless couple whose eyes welled up on seeing carrots in the bundle of vegetables as it was for the first time that they were going to eat carrots. Since then, Rao has been regularly giving vegetables to needy people and also calls for more and more participation.

Poshan Pack is a budget friendly social initiative which can be started with a sum of as low as Rs. 50 and anyone can autonomously join it without any kind of registration. People can give their choice of nutrition-rich vegetables to needy people once a week or even once a month according to their budget.

“Nutrition is the byproduct of this initiative as the primary aim is to connect people with each other. There is a long lasting and profound joy of giving nutrition to people rather than enjoying materialistic things. People should also be careful while giving vegetables to needy people and not give them in excess as it gets wasted. Vegetables worth Rs. 50 to Rs. 100 becomes enough for a family. I would ask more and more people to join this initiative and contribute for a healthy India,” Rao added.