With as many as 9.84 crore beneficiaries registered under the Centre’s Poshan Tracker for anganwadi services, the union ministry of women and child development said in a release that of these beneficiaries, 80.2 per cent have linked their Aadhaar till September 2.
The ministry is carrying out a concerted push to celebrate ‘Poshan Maah’ after the prime minister asked people in his last monthly radio address, Mann Ki Baat, to work to alleviate malnutrition levels. To track its efforts to curb malnutrition, the Centre had launched the ‘Poshan Tracker’ application in 2021 to measure the physical health parameters of children in anganwadis to record the prevalence of stunting, wasting and under-weight children and to track nutrition service delivery.
For the Poshan Tracker app, the Centre had distributed smartphones and growth devices developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among anganwadi workers. Till now, the ministry said, 11.75 lakh smartphones and 12.36 lakh growth monitoring devices have been distributed to anganwadi centres.
The ministry also said that under the campaign, they will strengthen 40,000 anganwadi centres across aspirational districts, and 36,000 have been identified so far. In aspirational districts, the ministry will also work to reduce malnutrition numbers among 22 lakh adolescent girls in aspirational districts and in the states of the Northeast, and aadhaar seeding for that is ongoing.
In June, the ministry had announced that if a women beneficiary had done aadhaar seeding, they will be allowed to avail nutrition and anganwadi services across any state; the ministry had also introduced aadhaar kits in anganwadis to help children register for the identification cards.
Published 13 September 2022, 18:20 IST