JOIN USBudget has nothing for ‘Poshan’
In spite of a pressing need for a big hike, unfortunately, the Union budget 2022-23 did not have anything major to offer for nutrition. Contrarily, budgetary allocation towards many of the centrally-sponsored schemes for nutrition registered either a decline or no significant enhancement, particularly at a time when the child and maternal nutrition has deteriorated in many Indian states as per the recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS) for 2019-20.
With the cognisance of the deteriorating state of nutritional outcomes, is Budget 2022-23 equipped to accelerate India’s progress in reducing undernutrition among women and children? Let's dive deeper into the Budget expenditure earmarked for various nutrition-sensitive sectors.
First is the Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 (earlier known as the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)) which provides integrated benefits to both women and children. This scheme has been allocated Rs 20,263 crore in 2022-23, a meagre increase (less than 1%) over the last year’s budget estimates. Incidentally, Poshan Abhiyan, now a part of Poshan 2.0, aimed to bring down stunting among children aged 0-6 years to 25% by the year 2022. However, it seems that the government has derailed from its earlier target since India still has a high level of stunting among children under the age of five (35.5% in 2019-20).
Not only that, the Mid-day Meal Scheme (renamed as Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) saw a drop in the budget allocation from Rs 11,500 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 10,234 crore in 2022-23. Even the revised estimates for 2021-22 registered an 11% decline over its budget estimates. This indicates that the total allocation earmarked was not spent during the current financial year primarily due to pandemic induced shut-down of schools and Anganwadi centres.
Food subsidy, another important head for nutrition, was allocated Rs 2.43 lakh crore in 2021-22. However, these estimates were revised to Rs 2.86 lakh crore due to the extension of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) till March 2022. With no extension of PMGKAY or no outstanding dues of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), food subsidy in 2022-23 is budgeted at Rs 2.07 lakh crore. Clearly, the allocation towards direct nutritional programmes has gone down, albeit initiatives such as the Centre's proposal to introduce millets in the Mid-Day meal.
Access to adequate food and a nutritious diet alone cannot tackle the multidimensional problem of malnutrition. Women’s education, sanitation and drinking water also need to be prioritised. In this regard, the third important budgetary allocation for nutrition is education, particularly women's education. Samagra Shiksha, with an outlay of Rs 37,383 crore in 2022-23, is 20% higher than the estimates of the previous year, while this is only a 3% increase over the estimates of 2019-20. So, the question is, how can these funds be utilised to adopt strategies to make up for the loss of school education over the last two years?
In 2022-23, the National Scheme for Incentive to Girl Child for Secondary Education received zero allocation while the SAMBAL scheme (part of Mission Shakti) registered a decline over the Budget estimates announced last year. This decline could further exacerbate nutritional insecurity as female education is strongly associated with child care practices, sanitation and hygiene.
Fourth, water and sanitation programmes such as Jal Jeevan mission and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan saw a remarkable increase in the budgetary allocation for 2022-23. Notably, the budgetary allocation for the Jal Jeevan mission has increased from Rs 50,011 to Rs 60,000 crore between 2021-22 and 2022-23 to cover 3.8 crore households. Even with a substantial increase in the coverage of improved sanitation and safe drinking water facilities over the recent years, a concomitant improvement was not witnessed in the nutritional outcomes (as per NFHS-5). Essentially, these programmes now need to focus on behavioural change and capacity building for the holistic development of women and children.
The Centre needs to ensure that adequate budgetary allocations are provided for nutrition-sensitive programmes as any disruption in their delivery mechanism could contribute to intergenerational malnutrition. Unless there is a shift in the governments’ piecemeal efforts with tight monitoring of funds, the country may miss the target of eliminating malnutrition.
(Jose is a Fellow at ICRIER and Khurana is PhD scholar at BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad.)