Undernutrition among children and its determinants across the parliamentary constituencies of India: a geospatial analysis

In India, undernutrition among children has been extremely critical for the last few decades. Most analyses of undernutrition among Indian children have used the administrative boundaries of a state or a district level as a unit of analysis. This paper departs from such a practice and focuses instead on the political boundaries of a parliamentary constituency (PC) as the unit of analysis. The PC is a critical geopolitical unit where political parties and party candidates make election promises and implement programmes to improve the socio-economic condition of their electorate. A focus on child undernutrition at this level has the potential for greater policy and political traction and could lead to a paradigm shift in the strategy to tackle the problem by creating a demand for political accountability. Different dimensions and new approaches are also required to evaluate the socio-economic status and generate concrete evidence to find solutions to the problem. Given the significance of advanced analytical methods and models embedded into geographic information system (GIS), the current study, for the first time, uses GIS tools and techniques at the PC level, conducting in-depth analysis of undernutrition and its predictors. Hence, this paper examines the spatial heterogeneity in undernutrition across PCs by using geospatial techniques such as univariate and bivariate local indicator of spatial association and spatial regression models. The analysis highlights the high-low burden areas in terms of local hotspots and identifies the potential spatial risk factors of undernutrition across the constituencies. Striking variations in the prevalence of undernutrition across the constituencies were observed. Most of these constituencies that performed poorly both in terms of child nutrition and socio-economic indicators were located in the northern, western, and eastern parts of India. A statistically significant association of biological, socio-economic, and environmental factors such as women's body mass index, anaemia in children, poverty, household sanitation facilities, and institutional births was established. The results highlight the need to bring in a mechanism of political accountability that directly connects elected representatives to maternal and child health outcomes. The spatial variability and pattern of undernutrition indicators and their correlates indicate that priority setting in research may also be greatly influenced by the neighbourhood association.