Taking Geography Seriously

Childhood malnutrition is a significant challenge for India. Literature exploring the determinants of malnutrition has emphasised the importance of the local context. Malnutrition is an outcome of the various socio-economic forces that are entwined in local specificities. This makes it very important to keep the context in mind for designing policy and avoid “One-size-fits-all” solutions. In this context, this chapter takes a different route by exploring the spatial heterogeneity in the associations between variables known to impact childhood malnutrition. The variations in associations can be learnt from the data instead of being specified in an ad hoc a priori manner. This can give better insights into the spatiality of the context within which socio-economic processes interact to produce malnutrition. This analysis is performed in the context of rural Maharashtra using Mission Antyodaya and several other databases.