How tribal women in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha are unlearning myths about food

Bommai Samrath, a 29-year-old mother from Nayapara village in Bastar district of Chhattisgarh had always thought a bowl of rice and dal was adequate for each of her children. She herself had never bothered to have much more for her meals. As a result, her elder child had ended up as a low birth weight baby, and limped through childhood with regular coughs, colds and diarrhoea. She herself struggled with anaemia, until she joined the ChildFund India’s Mother and Child Health and Nutrition (MACHAN) programme around her second pregnancy in 2017.

For 26-year-old Malati Kashyap of Katora village in the same district, rice and dal seemed adequate for her two sons – six-year-old Laxman and two-and-a-half-year-old Hitesh. While her sons often fell ill with coughs and colds, she always felt tired at the end of the day.