🤝 Schemes & WelfareMAINS · GS2.13

NFHS-6 shows gains in maternal, child health and nutrition

India's sixth National Family Health Survey, conducted in 2023-24 across 715 districts, records broad improvement in maternal care, child immunisation and nutrition.

What happened

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) released the sixth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6), the latest in India's flagship household-based health and demographic survey series.
NFHS-6 was carried out during 2023-24, with the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai as the nodal agency coordinating fieldwork and analysis.
The survey covered nearly 6.79 lakh households across 715 districts, generating estimates on population, health, nutrition and family-welfare indicators down to the district level.
Compared with NFHS-5 (2019-21), it shows gains in institutional deliveries, antenatal care, full child immunisation and a fall in child stunting and severe wasting.
The Total Fertility Rate held steady at the replacement level of 2.0, and household health-insurance coverage rose sharply, credited largely to Ayushman Bharat – PM-JAY.
The survey also flagged emerging concerns: rising non-communicable diseases and a "double burden" of undernutrition alongside growing overweight and obesity.

Background & context

The National Family Health Survey is a large-scale, multi-round sample survey conducted across India under the stewardship of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which designated IIPS, Mumbai as the nodal agency. Since the first round in 1992-93, the NFHS has become the country's principal non-census source of district- and state-level data on fertility, family planning, maternal and child health, nutrition, anaemia, and an expanding set of indicators on women's empowerment, health financing and lifestyle disease. The series runs roughly once every several years: NFHS-1 (1992-93), NFHS-2 (1998-99), NFHS-3 (2005-06), NFHS-4 (2015-16), NFHS-5 (2019-21), and now NFHS-6 (2023-24). Each round expands its scope; NFHS-4 was the first to deliver district-level estimates, a feature NFHS-6 retains across all 715 districts surveyed.

The survey matters because India does not run a decennial Census on the original schedule, leaving the NFHS as the most authoritative recent picture of how Indian households fare on health and demography. It is the data backbone for tracking progress on national programmes — Janani Suraksha Yojana and Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram on institutional delivery, Mission Indradhanush and the Universal Immunisation Programme on child vaccination, POSHAN Abhiyaan on nutrition, and Ayushman Bharat on health financing. Because NFHS estimates feed directly into the Sustainable Development Goals India Index and into welfare-scheme targeting, each round becomes a scorecard against which the government's health interventions are judged. NFHS-6 is read against its immediate predecessor, NFHS-5, to measure the direction of change over roughly four years.

The NFHS sits within a wider architecture of Indian population and health statistics, and a complete note keeps the neighbours straight. The decennial Census of India and the Sample Registration System (SRS) are both run by the Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner under the Ministry of Home Affairs; the SRS is the official source for the country's vital rates and for the headline Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) series. The National Sample Survey (NSS), run by the National Statistical Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), covers consumption, employment and similar socio-economic themes. The NFHS, by contrast, is health- and demography-specific, conducted under MoHFW with IIPS as the nodal coordinating agency and a set of partner field organisations doing the household interviews and biomarker measurements. Reading these as one family is what makes "match the survey to the conducting body" questions survivable.

How the survey is built

NFHS-6 is a sample survey, not a complete enumeration: it draws a representative sample of households and then collects data through structured questionnaires administered to women, men and the household as a unit, supplemented by anthropometric measurement (height and weight, which yield the stunting, wasting and underweight estimates) and biomarker tests. The 6.79 lakh households spread across all 715 districts give the round its district-level granularity — the level at which welfare programmes are actually planned and monitored. A "stunted" child is short for their age (height-for-age, a marker of chronic undernutrition), a "wasted" child is thin for their height (weight-for-height, a marker of acute undernutrition), and an "underweight" child is light for their age (weight-for-age, which blends both); keeping these three apart is essential because NFHS-6 moved them in different directions — stunting and severe wasting fell while underweight stayed nearly flat. "Full vaccination" for the 12-23 month cohort is a composite measure (BCG, the full course of polio and DPT/pentavalent doses, and measles), which is why adding rotavirus and a second measles dose lifts the broader child-protection picture so visibly. The release compares NFHS-6 directly with NFHS-5, so every headline figure is a round-on-round change rather than a standalone level.

For Prelims

Full form: National Family Health Survey, sixth round — NFHS-6.
Conducting ministry: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Union Government.
Nodal agency: International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai — a deemed university and the designated coordinating body for the NFHS series.
Reference period & coverage: conducted 2023-24; nearly 6.79 lakh households across 715 districts, with district-level estimates.
Maternal care: antenatal-care (ANC) coverage 95.9%; mothers receiving ANC in the first trimester rose 70.0% → 76.2%; at least four ANC visits 58.5% → 65.2%.
Deliveries: institutional deliveries 88.6% → 90.6%; births attended by skilled health personnel 89.4% → 91.3%.
Fertility & family planning: Total Fertility Rate (TFR) steady at 2.0 (at replacement level); Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) 66.7% → 69.1%.
Child immunisation: full vaccination among children aged 12-23 months 83.8% → 87.1%; rotavirus vaccination 36.4% → 85.4%; second dose of measles-containing vaccine 58.6% → 71.8%.
Child nutrition: stunting among under-five children 35.5% → 29.3%; severe wasting 7.7% → 5.2%; underweight 32.1% → 31.8%.
Health financing: households covered by a health-insurance/financing scheme 41.0% → 60.2%, attributed to Ayushman Bharat – PM-JAY.
Women's empowerment markers: women who had ever used the internet 33.3% → 64.3%; women operating a bank/savings account they use 78.6% → 89.0%.
Emerging challenge flagged: rising non-communicable diseases and the dual burden of undernutrition alongside overweight/obesity.
What it is NOT: NFHS is not a Census and not conducted by the Office of the Registrar General; it is a sample survey under MoHFW with IIPS as nodal agency. It is distinct from the Sample Registration System (SRS) (the Registrar General's source for the official birth/death rates and the IMR/MMR series) and from the National Sample Survey (NSS/NSSO) run by MoSPI. TFR figures appear in both NFHS and SRS, but the headline IMR and MMR rates are SRS-defined. A "stunting" measure (height-for-age) is also not the same as "wasting" (weight-for-height) or "underweight" (weight-for-age).
The NFHS family (for "how many rounds / match the year" questions): NFHS-1 (1992-93) · NFHS-2 (1998-99) · NFHS-3 (2005-06) · NFHS-4 (2015-16) · NFHS-5 (2019-21) · NFHS-6 (2023-24).

For UPSC: NFHS-6 (2023-24, MoHFW with IIPS Mumbai as nodal agency, 715 districts): TFR steady at 2.0, stunting down to 29.3%, full immunisation 87.1%, rotavirus coverage up to 85.4%, and household health-insurance coverage up to 60.2% on the back of Ayushman Bharat – PM-JAY.

Why it matters

NFHS-6 supplies the evidence base for India's largest public-health commitments at a moment when several long-running goals are within sight. A Total Fertility Rate steady at 2.0 confirms that India sits at the population-replacement level, shifting the policy conversation from controlling growth toward an ageing-society and demographic-dividend frame. The rise in institutional deliveries to 90.6% and in skilled birth attendance to 91.3% is the practical reading of two decades of demand- and supply-side maternal-health programmes; together with first-trimester ANC reaching 76.2%, it signals earlier and safer engagement with the health system, which is the pathway to lower maternal mortality.

The child-health story is where the round registers its sharpest movement. Full immunisation among one-year-olds climbing to 87.1% — and rotavirus coverage leaping from roughly a third to 85.4% — reflects the scale-up of newer vaccines through the Universal Immunisation Programme and Mission Indradhanush. Crucially, stunting in under-fives fell from 35.5% to 29.3% and severe wasting from 7.7% to 5.2%, the kind of nutrition gain that POSHAN Abhiyaan was designed to deliver and that bears directly on long-term cognitive and economic outcomes. Yet the survey is candid about the limits of progress: the near-flat underweight figure (32.1% to 31.8%) shows acute undernutrition remains stubborn, and the explicit warning on non-communicable diseases and the overweight/obesity burden marks India's epidemiological transition — the problem is no longer only "too little" but increasingly "the wrong balance." The jump in household insurance coverage to 60.2% is the clearest quantitative endorsement of Ayushman Bharat – PM-JAY's reach, while the doubling of women's internet use to 64.3% and bank-account use to 89.0% captures a wider story of financial and digital inclusion that conditions health-seeking behaviour itself.

For Mains

Anchor

NFHS-6 (2023-24) can anchor a direct question on the state of India's maternal and child health and the performance of welfare schemes for health and nutrition — the survey is itself the assessment instrument for those programmes.

Substantiation

Use the round-on-round figures — institutional deliveries 88.6% → 90.6%, full immunisation 83.8% → 87.1%, stunting 35.5% → 29.3%, insurance 41.0% → 60.2% — as hard data to back claims about the trajectory of India's health interventions.

Exemplification

The rotavirus coverage surge (36.4% → 85.4%) is a clean example of how adding a new antigen to the Universal Immunisation Programme can rapidly expand protection at population scale.

Problematisation

The near-flat underweight figure (32.1% → 31.8%) and the survey's own warning on rising non-communicable diseases and the dual burden of undernutrition and obesity expose the gap that nutrition policy has yet to close.

Way-forward

Argue for sharper convergence between POSHAN Abhiyaan, Ayushman Bharat and primary-care strengthening to tackle the double burden, using NFHS-6 as the baseline against which the next round will be judged.

Position

The government's stance, read through the release, is that scheme-led demand creation (PM-JAY for financing, Mission Indradhanush for immunisation) is driving measurable gains in coverage and equity.

Deploys into: health and human-resource development (GS2.13), welfare schemes and their performance, poverty and hunger/nutrition (GS3.5), and women/population/health dimensions of Indian society (GS1.7).

Health and Family Welfare · 2026-05-29 · PRID 2266600 · PIB source ↗