Acknowledging the gravity of situation, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India has launched a 36 week long ‘Malnutrition Quit India Campaign’ in November 2012 and has roped in Aamir Khan as the face of campaign who is also the UNICEF brand ambassador for malnutrition. The campaign has been rolled out in four stages to run back-to-back with some overlap. Stage 1 is to create awareness on symptoms of malnutrition for a period of eight weeks. Stage 2 is to give a clarion call and is spread over a period of six weeks. In stage 3, focus is on basic critical practices for maternal and child care as prevention from malnutrition. Stage 4 aims at informing the public about acquiring services and Mother Child Protection card. Television advertisements are particularly targeted towards sensitizing citizens of the country towards the plight of malnourished children and mothers so that they come in for-front for doing their bit while print and radio medium are targeted towards creating awareness amongst the real sufferers.
The campaign seems to be well thought out as it is also leveraging upon Aamir Khan’s reinforced credibility as crusader of social change established by success of Satyamev Jayate, a series by him dealing with social issues. Close to 40 short films and advertisement for radio, print and television in 19 different languages to connect with the Aam Admi and spread awareness against malnutrition have been produced by Aamir Khan along with lyricist and ad guru Prasoon Joshi.
However, critics are criticizing the campaign on the account that roping in Aamir Khan is nothing but glamorizing malnutrition and the real focus should be on Accredited Social Health Activists who are running ICDS nutrition program in villages. But In such situations where we look to bring about attitude change, source of message is of high importance and here Aamir Khan with his established credibility is a more effective source of message than the ASHAs to bring about the desired results.
But it would be folly on our part to think that Aamir Khan would solve the problem with swirl of magic wand as the magnitude of problem is humongous and the causative factors are deep entrenched in system. In spite of all this, it is reasonable to believe that Malnutrition Quit India Campaign is a step in right direction as we have seen in past the success of pulse polio campaign that how synergy of government agencies and appeal from public figure can do the trick and achieve what once seemed next to impossible.
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