Wasting has no season

Last week: four states hold half the very-high-risk list. Madhya Pradesh 38 of 132. Tamil Nadu, none.

Part 4 → Four states hold half the red

This week, last of the national run: the number from Part 1 that should have moved with the calendar.

Dashboard wasting. Survey: about 19%. File: 3.2% in August 2026.

If that 3% were a real pulse of thin children, it should tick when infection and the lean season tick. A survey cannot see months. This file can.

The line

Unweighted average of district wasting, children 0–5:

Three years, down. No monsoon spike in 2024. None in 2025. None this summer. July 2025 bumps 0.2 off June and then the fall resumes.

Pool the 739 districts by calendar month and you get a faint pre-monsoon lift: April–May around 5.0, winter around 4.4. Half a point. That is not a season. That is weather inside a collapse.

Stunting on the same districts fell too — 35% to 25% — but wasting is the one that should be seasonal. It is the one that isn’t.

What 3% can mean

Researchers said in 2024: Tracker wasting is the wild gap with NFHS. NFHS-6 did not close it.

A file at 3%, with no monsoon, can be:

• True — fewer wasted children on the rolls.
• Measurement — height boards that miss wasting, or children too sick to arrive.
• Selection — the wasted child never enrolled, or enrolled and not weighed.

From November 2024 the large states report 95–99% of registered 0–5 children measured. That makes “we didn’t weigh them” harder for children already on the roll. It does not fix the board. It does not fix the child who never registered.

So the sentence is not “India ended wasting.”

The sentence is: the public monthly file does not show the seasonal pulse textbooks would expect, and it shows a three-year decline the survey does not. Anyone putting 3% on a success slide has to beat that gap first.

One check, not a state chapter

Where we have looked hardest at a single state, Gujarat wasting went 9% (late 2024) to 3% and stayed there. Narmada 6%, Chhota Udepur 8%, Anand 3%, this August. The hole there is stunting, not wasting — the opposite of NFHS, where wasting is the stubborn national indicator.

A close-up can wait. It is not this series.

What the five weeks were

Two numbers that are not the same object. A list of 132. A slope: 634 down, 94 up. Four states holding half the red. Wasting that will not keep a season, and should not be quoted as 19%.

The dashboard will keep publishing. September was not on the site when this file closed. When it is, the list and the slope can be refreshed. The two thermometers will not start agreeing because a month got added.

If you quote Poshan Tracker next to NFHS in a deck: stunting, maybe, with a wince. Wasting, no.

Data: Part 5 of 5. Poshan Tracker, April 2023–August 2026. District averages unweighted. Balanced panel = 739 districts. Programme data, not NFHS. NFHS-6 wasting remains ~19%. Also on LinkedIn.