Most things improved. Anaemia did not.

Each row is one measure: the grey dot is NFHS-5 (2019-21), the blue dot NFHS-6 (2023-24). They are two surveys with different samples, a before and an after, not a trend. Whether a move is good depends on the measure: fewer stunted children is good, more men with high blood pressure is not.

One bar for each measure, the change in percentage points from the first round to the second. A bar to the right means the share rose. Whether a rise is good depends on the measure: more vaccinated children is good, more anaemic children is not. The blue bars are the ones that went the wrong way for the family.

A point is a point of the whole population, not a per cent change. Ten points on a measure that starts at 20 is a large change; ten points on one that starts at 80 is a smaller one in proportion.

Anaemia means too little haemoglobin to carry oxygen. A child with it tires easily and learns more slowly; a pregnant woman with it is more likely to bleed dangerously at birth. The usual causes in India are a diet short of iron, folate and vitamin B12, worms and malaria, and blood lost in childbirth and menstruation.

Both rounds measured haemoglobin the same way, from a drop of blood from a finger. Experts have argued that a finger-prick reads lower than blood drawn from a vein, which would overstate anaemia in both rounds alike; it would not explain a rise between them.

Each row is a state; the blue dot is NFHS-5 and the grey dot, where there is one, NFHS-4. The dashed rule is India. Anaemia does not sort states the way income does: some richer states sit near the top and several north-eastern states near the bottom. Diet, water and sanitation, worm infections, inherited blood disorders and the reach of iron supplements all play a part.

Stunting is the long story: a child too short for her age has gone without enough food, or lost it to infection, for months or years, often since the womb. Wasting is the short story: too thin for her height, usually from recent hunger or illness. Underweight mixes the two.

The feeding lines explain part of it. Most children get breastmilk; few get enough meals of enough kinds of food once they are past six months.

The survey counts deaths from mothers' birth histories, so each rate describes the five years before the interview, not the survey year itself. The Registrar General's Sample Registration System counts deaths every year and is the better source for a single year.

The first doses come at a clinic soon after birth and almost every child gets them. The later doses need the family to come back, again and again, and that is where children drop out. Rotavirus vaccine, which prevents the commonest cause of severe diarrhoea, joined the public programme state by state from 2016.

Since 2005 the Janani Suraksha Yojana has paid mothers to deliver in a facility, and the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram has made the delivery, the medicines and the ambulance free in public hospitals. The rise in facility births is their mark. Iron tablets and four antenatal visits depend on the months before the birth, when the system reaches women less reliably.

A caesarean saves lives when a birth goes wrong. The World Health Organization has long said that rates above 10 to 15 per cent of all births bring no further benefit to mothers or babies. Private hospitals are paid more for an operation than for a normal birth, and many women ask for one; the survey cannot say which births needed it.

The interviewer takes three blood-pressure readings and a finger-prick for sugar, at whatever time of day the visit happens. A single random sugar reading is a screen, not a diagnosis of diabetes. People already taking medicine count, whatever their reading that day, because their condition is known.

High blood pressure and diabetes cause no pain for years, then cause strokes, heart attacks and kidney failure.

The states with the most high blood pressure are mostly the richer, older, more urban ones: the condition rises with age, weight and salt. A state low on the list is not necessarily healthier; it may simply be younger.

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among Indian women, and among the most preventable: a simple test every few years finds the changes before they become cancer. India began offering routine screening to people over 30 only in the late 2010s, so NFHS-5 caught the programme early. A higher dot is better here.

The survey asks whether a woman has an account that she herself uses, and a phone that she herself uses, not one in the house. It cannot say who decides what is withdrawn, or who reads her messages.

Bank accounts are spread far more evenly than phones. An account can be opened for a woman by a government scheme; a phone is something her household decides to buy for her.

The questions are asked of one woman per household, alone, by a trained woman interviewer, and only if privacy can be ensured. Even so, every survey of this kind undercounts: women who are afraid, ashamed or still living with the man do not always say. A low figure can mean less violence, or less telling.

In most of India tobacco is a man's habit and chewing is as common as smoking. The north-east is different: there women chew betel and tobacco too, and the gap between the sexes narrows.

These are the conditions children grow up in. Toilets and clean water decide how often a child gets diarrhoea; a smoky kitchen decides how often she coughs. The Swachh Bharat Mission built toilets between the two rounds and Ujjwala gave LPG connections; the survey counts whether a household uses them, not whether it has one.

The total fertility rate is how many children a woman would have if she lived through today's birth rates at each age. About 2.1 keeps a population the same size in the long run. Below it, the population still grows for decades, because many young women are now in their childbearing years.

More than half of the couples who use any method rely on sterilising the woman, usually once they have the children they want; few space births with temporary methods. Vasectomy is a simpler operation, and almost no men have one.

A gap is not always a disadvantage, and it does not always favour towns. A bar to the right can be a good thing that towns have more of, such as toilets or schooling, or a bad thing, such as obesity. Read the measure before the direction.

Read across a row to see one state's profile, down a column to see where a problem is worst. The states that have largely left undernutrition behind tend to carry more of the diseases of plenty, high blood pressure and blood sugar; others carry both at once.