Additional Nutrition to Children Through Anganwadis
In order to improve the nutritional status of women and children, Government is providing additional nutrition through Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP) under Anganwadi Services (AWS) and Scheme for Adolescent Girls (SAG) under the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme to children (6 months to 6 years), Pregnant Women, Lactating Mothers and out-of-school Adolescent Girls (11-14 years).
Further, POSHAN Abhiyaan has been launched on 8th March, 2018, with an objective to reduce malnutrition from the country in a phased manner and achieve improvement in nutritional status.
Mission Poshan 2.0 (Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0) has been announced in budget 2021-2022 as an integrated nutrition support programme, to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition.
No survey has been conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to collect data on the requirement for finalisation of supply, nor the Ministry has appointed any agency for the purchase and supply of food. However, streamlining guidelines were issued to all States/ UTs on 13.01.2021, covering several aspects such as quality assurance, supply chain management, roles and responsibilities of duty holders, procedure for procurement, integrating AYUSH concepts, Data management and Monitoring through ‘Poshan Tracker’ for transparency, efficiency and accountability in delivery of supplementary nutrition.
The Poshan Tracker application rolled out in March 2021 is a digital enabler for both beneficiaries and Government functionaries including Anganwadi workers (AWWs). On the one hand, on boarding of citizens/beneficiaries on Poshan Tracker application would enable them to demand for their entitlements and on the other hand, it will act as an effective governance tool to strengthen and bring about transparency in nutrition delivery support systems for improving maternal and child under nutrition. The POSHAN Tracker management application provides a 360-degree view of the activities of the Anganwadi Centre (AWC), service deliveries of Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) and complete beneficiary management for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children.
Poshan Tracker application has been built on latest technology for ensuring real time monitoring of provisioning supplementary nutrition for improving nutritional status of beneficiaries and providing real time information for prompt supervision and management of services. It has a real time monitoring dashboard available for all level department users, i.e. National, State, District, Project and Sector levels. Dashboard for Government officials and public are available separately
This information was given by the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.