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Rewa: The sixth round National Family Health Survey (NFHS-6) has some key indicators missing which would have revealed the performances of at least two flagship schemes of the Narendra Modi government. 

The NFHS – the largest health survey of the country – is conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), under the aegis of the Union health ministry. The NFHS-6 was carried out in 2023-24 and NFHS-5 in 2019-21. The factsheets of the NFHS-6 were released on May 29, 2026.

One among them is access to clean cooking fuel.

The NFHS-5 had shown that more than 40% households did not have access to clean cooking fuel – something that questioned the efficacy of the Union government’s Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which was supposed to ease the way for LPG connections to poor women. Similarly, it also showed that India was not close to being open-defecation free – an aim of the Swachh Bharat Mission.

It is noteworthy that after the release of NFHS-5, the then IIPS director K.S. James lost his chair.

What is also missing from NFHS-6 is the sex ratio at birth and infant and child mortality rates – although these two are reflected in other data-collection exercises of the government.

“The NFHSs give district-wise data, unlike other health surveys conducted by the government. This district-wise data is important for fine-tuning policy making for different socio-economic groups and various districts,” a former IIPS faculty-member said, anonymously.

NFHS’ numbers also slightly differed from other health surveys conducted by the government.

The prevalence of anaemia indicator is also missing from this round of the NFHS. The high prevalence, as presented in NFHS-5, of anaemia had made news last time. Now, the government’s National Institute of Nutrition is going to measure its prevalence

through a method different from what was deployed by IIPS. The IIPS’ method, though, was also marked controversial by some experts. 

Obesity and other ills

The sixth round of NFHS-6 also indicates a rise in obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes among both men and women in the country. 

The NFHS-6 says that a little less than 30.7% of the female population aged 15 and above – 21.6 crore people – is obese. The jump in these figures in the NFHS-6 from the NFHS-5 is 6.7 percentage points. 

Similarly, 27.3% of the male population of the country is obese – a jump of 4.4 percentage points from the figure of the NFHS-5. In absolute numbers, this translates into 20.4 crores males.

The increasing obesity of the male and female population is a continuance of trends as reflected in previous rounds of NFHSs as well. But what is significant is that the rise in obesity levels registered between the NFHS-6 and NFHS-5 is more than the rise which happened between the two previous rounds, i.e, NFHS-5 and NFHS-4.

Obesity, high blood pressure or hypertension, and diabetes are linked with each other. No wonder, therefore, that the proportion of the male population which has ‘very high’ levels of diabetes (more than 160 milligram per decilitre of blood) has risen by 3.8% points. The jump in the female population of this proportion is by 2.8 percentage points. This translates into very high absolute numbers – 8.15 crore crore for males and 6.42 crores for females.

The hypertension picture also presents concern,........

© The Wire