India’s aspiration to become a Viksit Bharat and a $30 trillion economy by 2047 is ambitious and desirable. However, such a vision cannot be realised through slogans or macroeconomic targets alone. It demands sustained, evidence-based investments over the next two decades, particularly in human capital formation.
Infrastructure, manufacturing, digital innovation and ease of doing business dominate public discourse, and there is often mention of health and education in various policy discussions. However, in spite of all these discussions, a critical link remains largely missing: a concrete road map and focused and systematic investment in early childhood care and development (ECCD).
Without strengthening the foundations laid in the earliest years of life, India’s development ambitions risk being on fragile ground. An investment in ECCD is not a welfare intervention but a strategic economic investment.
From conception to the second birthday of a child — the first 1,000 days of life — have been considered most important for the growth and development of children. This phase has been recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF as a crucial ‘window of opportunity’ for shaping a child’s future well-being and potential. The next six years which follow (three to eight years) constitute approximately another 2,000 days.
Thus, the first 3,000 days shape brain architecture, physical health, cognitive ability, emotional regulation and social skills. The early capabilities developed during this period determine a child’s capacity to learn, adapt and contribute productively to society as an adult. Children who are well-nourished, emotionally secure and cognitively stimulated are more likely to complete education, acquire skills, participate meaningfully in the workforce and earn higher incomes.
At the national level, such investments reduce future spending on health care, remedial education and social protection, while expanding the tax base through a healthier and more productive workforce. These efforts can lift families out of poverty and help them move upward in the economic ladder. By reducing inequities rooted in poverty, gender, and geography, ECCD strengthens social mobility and inclusive growth.
The evidence and experience from many countries including the United States, the Nordic countries, particularly Finland, and also from South Korea support these arguments. However, ECCD investments demand patience. Their most visible benefits emerge over 10 to 20 years later, as healthier and better-prepared cohorts enter adulthood.
Yet, once realised, these gains are durable, intergenerational and central to national competitiveness. Build upon the existing foundation India’s experience offers important lessons. Over the past five decades, the country has made notable progress in child and newborn survival.
This did not occur by chance. Programmes such as the Child Survival and Safe Motherhood initiative (1992), the Reproductive and Child Health programme (1997), and their consolidation under the National Health Mission, significantly reduced infant and under-five mortality, improved immunisation coverage and addressed severe malnutrition. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), 1975, later restructured as Mission Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.
0, laid the foundation for nutrition and early care, especially among poorer households. State governments also contributed through innovations and delivery models.
However, most interventions have been narrowly focused and fragmented. The primary emphasis has remained on survival — keeping children alive — rather than enabling them to reach their full developmental potential. Moreover, ECCD initiatives have largely been targeted at children within government safety nets, leaving out vast sections of middle- and higher-income families.
This exclusion is problematic, because developmental challenges are not confined to poverty alone. Children from middle and even upper income households increasingly face obesity, physical inactivity, excessive screen exposure, delayed social skills, emotional difficulties and behavioural problems.
Early childhood development must be universal, not targeted. A case for early interventions Scientific understanding of child development has advanced rapidly, reinforcing the urgency of early intervention. Research in epigenetics shows that health, nutrition, stress and environmental exposures even before conception can influence gene expression and long-term health outcomes.
Parental obesity, substance use, poor nutrition and chronic stress increase a child’s risk of non-communicable diseases, developmental delays, and metabolic disorders. During the first 1,000 days, most neural connections are formed, and nearly 80%-85% of brain development occurs.
Deprivation or neglect at this stage is often irreversible. Paradoxically, this is also when children spend almost all their time within families, with minimal engagement with formal systems beyond immunisation or illness care. In the digital age, many parents rely on social media for guidance, much of which is commercially driven or poorly informed.
Credible and structured support on early stimulation, responsive care-giving, play and emotional nurturing remain scarce. Formal interventions typically begin only around 30-36 months, through Anganwadi centres or private preschools. While important, these come late.
The provision of developmental interventions in the first 1,000 days of life is still a ‘big missing window’. Therefore, India must move beyond fragmented approaches centred on feeding programmes or notional school health services. What is needed is an integrated ECCD framework that brings together health, nutrition, early learning, emotional wellbeing and care-giving, from conception to eight years of age.
For a nation aspiring to economic leadership, investment in early childhood is not optional. It is foundational. First, India needs structured premarital and pre-conception counselling for young adults and couples, focusing on nutrition, mental health, lifestyle choices and intergenerational impacts.
This would represent one of the highest-return investments in public health, benefiting two generations simultaneously. Second, parents must be empowered with knowledge about early stimulation and responsive care-giving.
Simple, low-cost activities — talking, reading, singing, playing and emotional engagement — can profoundly shape brain development from the earliest weeks of life. For example, stories can be read and told to a baby as young as four weeks.
Doing so, accelerates formation of neural connections in the brain and future learning capacity. A nationwide system of parental education on child growth and development is an urgent need.
Third, parents and families should be trained in basic growth monitoring and age-appropriate developmental milestones, through periodic, simple sessions. Early identification of delays can be among the most cost-effective interventions for infants and toddlers, rivalled only by immunisation. Fourth, India must invest far more in quality care and learning systems for children aged two to five, a phase critical for preventing undernutrition and obesity and for shaping life-long habits related to health and emotional regulation.
Fifth, education, nutrition and health systems must break out of silos. Children need learning, not just schooling; nutrition for life, not just feeding; and well-being, not ritualistic check-ups.
Schools, as the most widely accepted institutional platform, should evolve into integrated hubs for learning, health and nutrition. Sixth, preconception health and the first 3,000 days must become part of a nationwide social conversation, extending beyond clinics into homes, workplaces and communities. Every teacher in every school in India, too needs training in child growth and development beyond academics.
Finally, schools should engage parents as partners, while non-profit organisations, philanthropic institutions, and corporate social responsibility initiatives must help build a supportive ECCD ecosystem. Need for a citizen-led movement India’s future will not be determined by what it promises its children, but by what it invests in them during their earliest years. A citizen-led movement for child growth, learning and development — supported by the state and owned by society — may well be the missing link in India’s journey to becoming a truly developed nation.
These actions would require effective and functional coordination between different Ministries, especially the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Women and Child Development, amongst others. To formalise and ensure a road map, it can be implemented as an inter-ministerial plan or as an overarching national mission on early childhood care and development. Dr.
Chandrakant Lahariya is a writer, practising physician, health policy expert and a parenting and child development specialist.