When it comes to underfed children, India not Shining

This is as per the Commissioners’ report appointed by the Supreme Court to review Government social security schemes. These figures are not based on surveys but official figures supplied by the government.

Once again, the Supreme Court will ask the Centre and state governments why they have been unable to implement its November 28, 2003 order which made it clear that there should be a disbursement centre (Anganwadi) in every settlement and each child upto 6 years, each adolescent girl, each pregnant woman and nursing mother and each malnutritioned child be covered under the scheme.Meant to be one the most ambitious programmes, the Anganwadi was to provide a bundle of services: supplementary nutrition, health check-ups, referral services, immunization, nutrition and health education and non-formal education.

It was envisaged as a Centrally sponsored scheme with administrative expenses borne by the Centre while the expenditure on nutrition supplement would be met by the states.

While Kerala and Tamil Nadu have shown that it is feasible, affordable and effective, there are ‘‘trouble’ states like Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh where the performance is cause for serious worry. Even if they exist on paper, they are not providing nutrition to the 0-3 age group. The adolescent girl scheme has not even taken off.

Several international agencies like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, CARE, World Bank and various NGOs are involved in different facets of the programme. These are the alarming implementation statistics: only 3.4 crore children are getting benefits of supplementary nutrition under ICDS (this too is a theoretical entitlement). This is nowhere close to the number of children in the age group (15 crore), the number of malnutritioned (8.5 crore) or even the numbers from families below the poverty line (6 crore).

The percentage of adolescent girls being covered is much less as the scheme has not even been made operational in the existing Anganwadis. The coverage of settlements is not complete. For around 14 lakh habitations, there are only 6.05 lakh reporting Aganwadi centres. The emphasis of states is to increase quantity rather than quality of services.

These are some of the excerpts from Commissioners visits to individual states:

• Negligible supplementary feeding in Bihar. The state Government admits that there is no feeding of children under this scheme in the first few months of the financial year, as financial sanction is not issued in time.

• No feeding between May and December 2003 in Jharkhand due to delay in the allotment by state authorities and non-utilisation of funds already released by the Centre.

• No supplementry feeding since September 2003 in Shahgarh block of Sultanpur district and since November 2003 in Shankargarh block of Allahabad district in Uttar Pradesh.

• Poor coverage in West Bengal and the state has pleaded shortage of funds. Feeding of adolescent girls would require Rs 180 crore that has not been sanctioned by the Finance Department.

• North Eastern states are using funds under the PMGY to substitute rather than supplement the funds allocated for supplementary nutrition component of the programme.

The Department for Women and Child Development argued in a meeting held with the Commissioners in November last year that it had ‘‘neither the resources nor the mandate’’ to universalise ICDS as directed by the Supreme Court.

In fact, even within the sanctioned project area, the programme does not reach every settlement. Further, the programme is only targetted at disadvantaged families. Giving the constraints it operates under, the Department is interpreting the Court orders ‘‘within the existing guidelines’’. Taking serious note, the Commissioners have reccommended that the Court issue a clarificatory order that the term ‘‘settlement’’ as used in the November 2003 order pertains to a cluster of households within a village. The order must not be interpreted by the Department as only operationalizing the present centres. Second, that these services have to be extended to every child, pregnant and lactating mother and adolescent girl and not just to a pre-determined number identified by the states or to disadvantaged families.