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India, the emerging economic ‘super power’, is not immune to the plague of hunger and malnutrition. Its economic progress is not an indicator of its social progress. According to the Global Hunger Index Report 2018, India is ranked 103rd out of 119 countries (IFPRI) and continues to be in a position of unnerving hunger. With this alarming situation, India has introduced many public programs to strive against this distressing state of affairs.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is one of the flagship programs launched by the Indian government to combat child malnutrition in India. Launched in 1975, the scheme is still one of the largest programs worldwide for early childhood care and education for their growth and development. The scheme is an umbrella program providing a package of six services such as supplementary nutrition, preschool non-formal education, nutrition and health education, immunization, health check-ups, and referral services. The provision of these activities is dispensed by child care centers, commonly known as Anganwadis, which have workers and helpers acting as the prominent services providers of services like supplementary nutrition and preschool education under the program. They also have other health functionaries like accredited social health activists, commonly known as ASHA workers, and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM), laying out services like immunization, health check-ups, and health education. The purveying of the services is not only limited to children between the age of 0-6 years but also includes pregnant women and lactating mothers. There are approximately 13.72 lakh operational Anganwadi centers in India and 10897 operational Anganwadi centers in Delhi, as of 19th July 2019 (MWCD, 2019).
Although the scheme is claimed to have brought down the levels of malnutrition in India, the pace of decline in malnutrition and undernutrition is claimed to be quite slow. Also, the overall utilization of the program has improved, but states with high malnutrition rates are lagging behind. India harbors 50% of the undernourished child population of the world aged between 0-6 years. India is home to 158.8 million children under the age of 6 years (Census, 2011), and 40% of this child population is undernourished (ASSOCHAM & EY, 2017).
The question here arises why even after 44 years of incorporation of the scheme children still suffer from malnutrition and die of hunger. The National Food Security Act, 2013, an act that entitles the citizens of this country with the right to food, still proves to be failing massively. According to Reuters (2012), 3000 Indian children die every day due to illness related to malnutrition, and still umpteen heaps of wheat and rice get rot due to lack of storage facilities and an inefficient, corruption-plagued public distribution system failing lakhs of impoverished people. Despite large stocks of food grains corollary to high agricultural productivity, India stands in a very quizzical situation of experiencing towering levels of malnutrition, creating an extremely extraordinary paradox. The country experiencing expeditious economic growth since the 1990s is tagged with a very meek decline in child malnutrition.
The availability of funds for ICDS has never been a problem, but a political commitment to the success of public health programs in India has been not adequately evident in the policy discussions. India has received substantial funding from national and international sources, including the World Bank and UNICEF. India signed a US $106 million deal in 2012, and a US $200 million deal in 2018 for Integrated Child Development Services System Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Programme (ISSNIP). A training program, named ‘Udisha’ was put in place with funding from the World Bank in 2002.
With the available funds, the current Food Security Act, overproduction of agricultural products, unfortunately, the scheme was not able to achieve its goal. In my opinion, the policy to address the problem of child malnutrition should be reviewed. India must finally solve this problem because it has no place in today’s world.
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