March 07,2019:
Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor & uneducated mothers.
The government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children & pregnant women & lactating mothers.
These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal education & health & nutrition education.
The study analyses the findings of the National Family Health Survey 2005-2006 & 2015-2016 to compare the coverage of ICDS over a 10-year period.
During this time, the average respondents benefiting from these services increased from 9.6% to 37.9% for supplementary food, 3.2% to 21% for health & nutrition education, 4.5% to 28% for health check-ups & 10.4% to 24.2% for child-specific services over a period of 10 years.
At the same time, the poorest of the poor or quintile 1, who were the largest beneficiaries in 2006, got left behind quintile 2 & quintile 3 by 2016 for all four indicators such as supplementary food, counselling on nutrition, health check-ups & early childhood services, shows the study authored by Suman Chakrabarti, Kalyani Raghunathan, Harold Alderman, Purnima Menon & Phuong Nguyen.
For example, supply of food supplements in 2006 was the highest for the poorest quintile (11.7%). However, by 2016, they accounted for 34.8% of the respondents, behind quintile 2 (41.7%), 3 (45.5%) & 4 (39.7%).
The study also said that mothers without any schooling were the lowest beneficiaries as compared to those with primary & secondary schooling in 2006, & they continued to be so in 2016.
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