Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said that his government was committed to eradicating mal-nourishment among children and pregnant women from UP and if the Human Development Index (HDI) of the state can be improved the India too also improve.
“The malnourished children and mothers are blot for a civilized society but no other government worked in this direction. Only the SP government thought of providing hot nutritious food among the needy children and expecting women,” Yadav said while launching Hausala Poshan Scheme in Shrawasti on Friday.
The scheme will provide cooked nutritious food in the Anganwadi centres to around 10 lakh pregnant women and over 14 lakh malnourished children between six months and six years. The highly mal-nourished children would get 500 gm of desi ghee too while the women would get seasonal fruits everyday beside the food.
“This is a unique scheme and if this is implemented in letter and spirit, we will be able to eradicate mal-nourishment from UP. The Human Development Index of UP as well as that of India will also go up,” he said.
Malnourishment among women and children is abysmally high in UP as it is among the worst performing states in the area of underweight and malnourished children in the age group of 0 to 6 years. The state stood fourth from the bottom on child nutrition rates, only behind Bihar Andhra Pradesh and Daman and Diu.
As per the state’s own records, 35.5 per cent of the total children identified as beneficiaries of the supplementary nutrition programme under ICDS were underweight. What is more, 62,728 were in the Grade III and IV categories indicating severe malnourishment.
At present UP has more than two crore children identified as beneficiaries of the Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP), while nearly 50 lakh pregnant and lactating mothers are covered under the ICDS.
“I know the parameters are bad and Shrawasti is one of the most impoverished districts where number of malnourished children and women is very high. I want a change and have therefore launched the scheme from this district,” Yadav said.
The CM said that it is one of the finest schemes of the country in which children will get desi ghee, pregnant women will get fruits on a daily basis besides hot nutritious food. “I am sure once we start giving fruits to children, the attendance in schools will go up,” said Yadav.
Yadav sang paeans of his MP wife Dimple Yadav and credited her for the launch of the scheme. “The MP from Kannauj monitored the scheme to ensure that women and children got the best of facilities. On my part, I ensured that there was no shortage of funds,” he said.
The CM also launched development schemes which include construction of school buildings, roads and also distributed laptops among students.
“The SP government has brought a positive change in UP. It is not like the change of ‘achche din’ some parties promised and then conveniently forgot,” he said.
Without naming Yogi Adityanath, Yadav said that a Baba in Gorakhpur is taking credit for construction of AIIMS. “The state government gave the land for its construction and now others are taking credit. This shows how ungrateful leaders of that party are,” he said.