How South Asia Performed in Food and Nutrition Security?

South Asia is having the largest number of undernourished children in the world and within South Asia, India's share of having the undernourished children is the highest. This paper aims to examine the headway of food and nutritional condition of South Asian countries with special focus on India. South Asia comprises India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives, but for this study, we have not included Bhutan and Maldives due to less than a million populations. We have used Food and Agriculture Organisation FAO food security indicators from 1990 to 2016 with detailed analysis of food availability, accessibility, stability and utilisation. In food availability and stability parameters, most of the countries of South Asia including the region as a whole performed better, whereas, in the case of food access indicators like prevalence of undernourished and food utilisation indicators like stunting among children and anaemia among pregnant women; many South Asian countries underperformed and failed to meet up the targets set for millennium development goals (MDGs). Overall, Iran and Sri Lanka performed better; India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal performed at mediocre level and Afghanistan performed worst in almost all the indicators. The experience of achievements in MDGs will be helpful in planning for sustainable development goals with more emphasis on under nourishment, stunting among children and anaemia among women especially in countries like Afghanistan and India, which are lagging behind in these indicators.