By Arsh Rampal
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the National Nutrition Mission Plan Poshan Abhiyan at a mega event in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan on 8th March, International Womens Day, this year. The mission was approved by the union cabinet in December 2017, along with a three-year budget of Rs. 9,046 crore.
The project, which was launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, is aimed at addressing the issue of malnutrition, and associated problems, such as stunting, and anaemia.
In states such as Gujarat, Jharkand, Bihar Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, malnutrition among children under the age of five is reportedly more than the national average of 35.7%.
Background, aims & objectives of the scheme
India has been battling issues of malnutrition for decades, but the problem is still rampant in the country. More than half of the young female population in India suffer from anaemia. Roughly 38% of the countrys population, under five year of age, is affected by stunting.
The national nutrition scheme is not the only one of its kind that the Indian government has launched to address this issue. Prior to the launch of the recent nutrition scheme, the Centre had also launched several other programmes, which directly or indirectly, aimed at improving the nutritional status of children ages six or less, pregnant women, and lactating mothers. Although these programmes helped reduce stunting in children to some extent, they failed to tackle other problems of malnutrition.
However, the new nutrition programme aims at creating synergy, and linking the schemes with each other in order to arrive at the common goal of reducing malnutrition in India. The goal is to reduce stunting by 2%, under-nutrition by 2%, anaemia by 3%, and low birth weight by 2% per year.
For stunting the 2% mark is a minimum, as the aim is to reduce the rates of stunting from 38.4% to 25% by the year 2022. The scheme will incorporate central monitoring measures to ensure that all the states and union territories achieve the targeted goals. Over 10 crore people are estimated to benefit from the new programme.
What will the scheme provide?
The National Nutrition Mission will establish an apex body that will monitor, supervise, fix targets, and guide the nutrition-related interventions across ministries. A convergence mechanism to map the various schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition will also be established as part of the scheme.
A real-time monitoring system will also be established, which will be based on information and communication technologies. A lot of measures as part of the scheme are also targeted as Anganwadis, which has previously played an essential role in providing nutritional food to children in rural India. The Centre is aiming at incentivising Anganwadi Workers (AWW) to use IT based tools, and eliminated the use of registers. The measurement of height of children at the Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) will also be introduced as part of the mission.
The programme is being rolled out in a phased manner. It will be implemented in 315 districts with high prevalence of malnutrition in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20,”Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi said.
The approved budget of over Rs 9,000 crore will be dispersed over a period of 3 years. 50% of this budget will be funded by the government budgetary support and the remaining will be funding from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) or other multi-lateral development banks. The government budgetary support will be divided 60:40 between the Centre and the states.
The use of technology
The mission will incorporate information and communication technology, in order to implement and monitor the scheme more effectively. For field functionaries such as the Anganwadi workers, a mobile-based application will be developed, which will come pre-loaded on mobile phones provided to them. A six-tier monitoring dashboard for desktops will also be developed to monitor the scheme’s progress.
The mobile app for the Anganwadi workers will be able to carry out UID-based registrations of members. Photos of children receiving supplementary nutrition can ALSO be sent to the monitoring station to ensure delivery of service. The reliance on technology will help overcome a large number of problems that occur in the implementation of such large-scale schemes.
Possible problems with implementation
The scheme provides hope that the problems arising due to malnutrition could be be curbed in the next three years. However, this will only occur with effective implementation of the schemes that are aimed at tackling the problem.
The recent scheme merely establishes a real-time monitoring system for the schemes that are currently in place. A large number of these schemes have been in existence for over a decade, and yet have failed to reduce malnutrition in India significantly. This is largely due to the inherent defects in the scheme to solve the problem or a failure in implementation. A monitoring system would indeed help in the better implementation of these schemes on the grass-root level. However, it will not solve the pre-existing problems in those schemes which make them ineffective.
The monitoring system could also possibly face issues of implementation. Many schemes in India, including those tackling malnutrition, fails because states do not utilise funds allocated for the scheme. Although the states under will be provided with funds and technology for the new nutrition scheme, the effective use of these funds cannot be guaranteed. If states do not utilise the monitoring mechanism effectively, the implementation of other schemes will also be hindered.
The government has come up with a very novel idea for an issue that needs to be dealt with urgently. The scheme however is most likely to suffer from the same implementation defects as the previous schemes. The government has however, set very ambitious goals to be achieved, which are unlikely to be met in merely three years.