UPSC CSE – SYLLABUS – GS – 2- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
Anganwadi Centres
- The economic fallout of COVID-19makes the necessity of quality public welfare services more pressing than ever.
- The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme that caters to the nutrition, health and pre-education needs of children till six years of age as well as the health and nutrition of women and adolescent girls is one such scheme.
- It requires work on multiple fronts to be effective, given that recent reports have shown gaps in the utilisation of services.
- Anganwadi centres (AWCs) could become agents of improved delivery of ICDS’s services. But for that, they need to be recast.
Issues in Anganwadi centres (AWCs):
- According to government data, the country has 13.77 lakh AWCs.
- These centres have undoubtedly expanded their reach, but they need to play a much larger role in anchoring community development.
- Nearly a fourth of the operational AWCs lack drinking water facilities and 36 per cent do not have toilets.
- ICDS beneficiaries do register for services but because the anganwadis lack adequate facilities, they turn to paid options.
- Privately-run centres come at a price, hitting low-income families the hardest.
- A study on utilisation of ICDS services in coastal Karnataka reported enrolment in private nursery schools as a major reason for non-adherence to ICDS services.
- It also reported the need for improvement in the quality of meals provided by the programme.
- AWCs clearly do not seem to provide the environment that encourages parents to leave children at these centres.
- Only a limited number of AWCs have facilities like creche, and good quality recreational and learning facilities for pre-school education.
- Effective implementation of the ICDS programme rests heavily on the combined efforts of the anganwadi workers (AWWs), ASHAs and ANMs. But not much has been done to improve the career prospects and service conditions of these frontline workers.
- In 2015, the NITI Aayog recommended better sanitation and drinking water facilities, improved power supply and basic medicines for the AWCs.
- It also suggested that these centres be provided with the required number of workers, whose skills should be upgraded through regular training.
What is needed:
- Research has shown the significance of the playing-based learning approach in the cognitive development of children.
- An approach that combines an effective supplementary nutrition programme with pedagogic processes that make learning interesting is the need of the hour.
- Kerala, Telangana and Tamil Nadu are amongst the states that have done relatively better in this respect.
- The Centre’s POSHAN Abhiyaan has taken important steps towards building capacities of AWWs.
- It is important that a more robust mechanism is now created to regularly assess and plug knowledge gaps.
- Technology can also be used for augmenting the programme’s quality.
- AWWs have been provided with smartphones and their supervisors with tablets, under the government schemes.
- Apps on these devices track the distribution of take-home rations and supplementary nutrition services.
- The data generated should inform decisions to improve the programme.
- In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, anganwadi centres have been geotagged to improve service delivery.
- Gujarat has digitised the supply chain of take-home rations and real-time data is being used to minimise stockouts at the anganwadi centres.
- The Centre has acknowledged the need to improve anganwadi centres.
- Its Saksham Anganwadi Scheme aims to upgrade 2.5 lakh such centres across the country.
- An analysis of ICDS shines a light on three imperatives.
- First, while infrastructure development and capacity building of the anganwadi remains the key to improving the programme, the standards of all its services need to be upscaled.
- Second, states have much to learn from each other’s experiences.
- Third, anganwadi centres must cater to the needs of the community and the programme’s workers.
Source: ” https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-smart-anganwadi-7098591/ ”
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