After severe reductions in the 2015-16 Union Budget outlay for the Women and Child Development Ministry, which derailed the Government’s nutrition programme, Maneka Gandhi met philanthropist Melinda Gates to seek outside support to tackle the issue.
In a closed-door meeting on Friday, the WCD Minister briefed Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation about the Government’s plans to tackle malnutrition in a mission mode with a physical target-driven approach for progressively eliminating the problem.
“The Minister said that the Government will attempt to reach out to every undernourished child with coordinated and targeted delivery of health and supplementary nutrition services,” said an official from the Ministry.
“She (Maneka) sought help on the use of technology to re-equip the Aanganwadi workers, build the capacity of the workers and monitor the progress of the programme on a real-time basis,” he said.
Gates, on her part assured support on tacking the menace of malnutrition in the country.
“Melinda Gates said that her foundation would design the information and communications technology (ICT) systems for real time monitoring of the nutritional services that will be extended under the nutrition mission,” said the official.
“She told the Minister that her volunteers would assist in training the master trainers, who will in-turn train the Anganwadi workers, for effective and more pronounced results,” he said.
Maneka sought help from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation after the WCD Ministry witnessed the sharpest budget cut of 51 per cent, when compared to last year’s allocation, which postponed the government’s plan of launching the nutrition programme.
The funds for Integrated Child Development Scheme, which was to finance the nutrition programme were reduced from Rs 18,195 crore in 2014-15 budgets to Rs 8,335.8 crore in 2015-16 budgets, forcing Maneka to take up the issue with the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
In September last year, Maneka had announced the preparation of a comprehensive time bound action plan under National Nutrition Mission to combat malnutrition in the country. She had ordered the blue-print for the nutrition programme to be completed by November last year itself, so that the prorgramme could be launched by June this year.
According to National Family Health Survey (2005-06), almost 35.6 per cent of women in India have low body mass index, 22 per cent babies are born with low birth weight, 42.5 per cent of children under 5 years are underweight, 48 per cent are stunted, and 19.8 per cent are wasted.
As one of its flagship programmes, the WCD Ministry had announced that they would aim to bring down malnutrition from the current 50 per cent to 30 per cent, with its focus on under-nutrition which is about 40 per cent currently. They also targeted to arrest and reverse anemia (iron deficiency in women) from the current 55 per cent down to about 28 per cent.
Report of nutritional intake in India 2011-12 published under 68th round of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) also highlights the acute problem of malnutrition facing the country.
The finding showed that 57 per cent of households among the poorest five per cent of the rural population had calorie intake below 2,160 Kcal per day.
Average dietary energy intake per person per day was 2,233 Kcal for rural India and 2,206 Kcal for urban India.
The general recommendation as far as the calorie intake is concerned, is that men need about 2,700 Kcal per day and women require about 2,000 Kcal per day.