WCD ministry to come up with new norms for supplementary nutrition programme

The Women and Child Development ministry is coming up with revised norms for supplementary nutrition, bringing in a new category of dietary recommendations for children between 1 to 2 years, officials involved in the process said. The revised norms were formulated by a ministerial team of officials from the WCD as well as the food ministries, and a proposal has been forwarded to the finance ministry in this regard.

Under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme, three categories of children are given nutrition in the form of mid-day meals and ration to take home. Children aged between 6 months and 3 years, between 3 and 6 years, and children receiving pre-school education are the three categories. Till now, a common guideline was meant for children between the age of 6 months to 6 years; for take-home ration, children were to be given atleast 500 kilocalories of nutrition and 12-15 grams of protein, and 800 kcals and 20-25 grams of proteins if they were malnourished.

Also Read | The weak link in India’s growth chain

“We revised the norms to dovetail into the requirements of children in the age group of 1-2 years, since a uniform recommendation was ill-suited to all age groups of children,” a senior WCD official said.

Malnutrition figures across government departments remain inconsistent with the NFHS data and WCD ministry data differing from each other. The ministry relies on the Poshan Tracker, under which the activities of anganwadis and their beneficiaries are tracked on a real-time basis.

WCD ministry officials said that while under the NFHS-5, 7.7 per cent children of the total children they surveyed were shown to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 19.3 per cent children under severe as well as moderate acute malnutrition (SAM and MAM), the data with the ministry from Poshan Tracker showed that only 2.27 per cent children suffer from SAM and 7.06 per cent suffer from SAM and MAM. Officials said that WCD’s sample size is 7 crore children, while the NFHS data surveys 60 lakh children.

Under the Poshan Tracker, officials added, 10.06 crore beneficiaries are tracked, including 47.68 lakh lactating mothers, 70.48 lakh pregnant women, 8.46 crore children below 6 years. Among these, aadhaar of 9.38 crore beneficiaries have been seeded.

Last year, the Centre had asked states to ensure that beneficiaries in any part of the country can avail the system; till now, 57,000 beneficiaries from migrant populations have availed the system.

In the system, officials said, over 2 lakh anganwadis were identified to get a facelift by 2025-26 with facilities of LED screens, wi-fi, AV devices, etc. Till now, against an aim of 40,000, 41,000 anganwadis have been spruced up.

Officials also said that as many as 1 lakh adolescent girls in the age group of 11-14 years who dropped out of the system, have been brought to schools.

Dropout rates of adolescent girls, reported by states, have seen a consistent decline, officials said. In 2013-14, the dropout rate of 1.14 crore came down to 5 lakh in 2020-21, which further fell to 3.8 lakh in 2021-22, and then to 1 lakh in July last year.