In a startling revelation it has been found by a survey carried out by Child Rights and You (CRY) and Bihar lok Adhikar Manch (BlAM) that child care services in Bihar are going down the drains as only 38 per cent of children in the age group of 0-6 years are getting benefitted from the Centre's flagship scheme — Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) — while around 62 per cent children are still deprived of it.
A survey carried out in the districts of Bihar has revealed that over 88 per cent of the Anganwadi centres are not receiving funds for purchasing medicine kits and in 86 per cent centres, medicines kits are not even available.
A recent survey conducted in 20 districts CRY and BlAM pinpointed the areas that are of serious concerns. The report indicated that there are glaring infrastructural and qualitative gaps in ICDS service delivery system and suggested that the State needed a strong push to address the irregularities. It said that 19 per cent of the ICDS centres in Dalit areas neither have any weighing machine nor do they maintain growth monitoring charts of children. The ICDS centres are supposed to issue birth registration certificates to the newborns but only 24 per cent of the centres are found to be abiding by the rule.
The report which was released at a function here attended by the stakeholders revealed that Bihar depicted a gloomy scenario putting 27 per cent children under the category of acute malnutrition, as against the national average of 20 per cent, while 55 per cent are chronically malnourished (national average 48 per cent) and 56 per cent children are underweight (national average 43 per cent).
The report also pointed out the staggering number of children that a single ICDS centre attends to. CRY spokesman and operation-in-charge in Bihar Saradindu Bandyopadhyay said, "It's been observed that higher the average number of children attended by any single ICDS centre, the lower is the quality of service delivered. Statistics showed that in Bihar the average number of children attended by a single ICDS centre is 80, a number much higher than the national average of 55."
State coordinator, BlAM, Rajeev Ranjan observed that the community owned ICDS centres and decentraliesd monitoring systems could be the only solution to improve the quality of ICDS service. As per the available official data, in Bihar there are 91,677 approved ICDS centres catering to 80 children each and 7,334,160 children are being provided with the services while the total child population under the age group 0-6 years in the State is over 1.91 crore as per 2011 Census.