Worried about the severe reductions in the 2015-16 Union Budget outlay for the Woman and Child Development Ministry, Maneka Gandhi is preparing to take up the issue with the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The WCD Minister is concerned that the budget cut in critical programmes such as Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme will derail the Ministry’s nutrition programme.
“The States have got a larger allocation for women and child welfare programmes this time, so now the salaries for anganwadi workers which were earlier disbursed from the Centre will now be diverted from the States, so that is why the drastic cut,” said an official from the WCD Ministry. “Our only worry from the budget cut is that we may not be able to launch our critical nutrition programme for paucity of funds. Our Ministry will take up the issue with the Finance Minister very soon,” she said.
In terms of overall Budget, the Ministry has witnessed the sharpest cut of 51 per cent from the last Budget. The allocation for ICDS Scheme has been reduced from Rs18,195 crore in 2014-15 to Rs8,335.8 crore in 2015-16 Budget. 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.
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 2000 Kcal per day.