1-Dec-2021: National Nutrition Mission

POSHAN Abhiyaan launched on 8th March, 2018 addresses malnutrition issues across the nation through components like ICT Application, Convergence, Community Mobilization, Behavioural Change & Jan Andolan, Capacity Building, Incentives and Awards and Innovations. Activities undertaken in POSHAN Abhiyaan in last three years are as follows:

1. Under the Abhiyaan, a robust ICT platform., the Poshan Tracker has been developed and rolled out across 12.27 lakh Anganwadis covering approximately 9.84 crore beneficiaries.
2. The Abhiyaan empowers Anganwadi workers and Lady Supervisors by providing them with smartphones. As of now the number of Smartphones and GMDs (comprising Stadiometer, Infantometer, Weighing Scale for Infant and Mother & Child) made available to States/UTs are 11.03 lakh and 11.94 lakh respectively.
3. Under Convergence, key Ministries/Departments are working in coordination with Ministry of Women and Child Development for addressing issues concerning malnutrition.
4. Community Mobilization, Behavioural Change & Jan Andolan component helped reach out to the masses through the nation’s biggest nutrition-centric annual Jan Andolans, in the form of Poshan Maahs (September) and Poshan Pakhwadas (March). Since the launch of Poshan Abhiyaan, 4 Poshan Maah and 3 Poshan Pakhwada have been conducted. About 3.70 crore Community Based Events (CBEs) have also been conducted.
5. Under Capacity Building component approx., 10.22 lakh frontline functionaries have been successfully trained. Additionally, approx. 6.61 lakh field functionaries have undergone training through digital platform. Till date, 8.3 lakh Anganwadi Workers/ Anganwadi Helpers have been trained in the ICT application.
6. AWWs and AWHs are incentivized @Rs 500 and Rs 250 per month respectively on achieving targets under Home Visits and Weighing and Measuring of Children.
7. Under Innovations, 26 States/UTs have taken up more than 50 innovative initiatives so far since the launch of POSHAN Abhiyaan.

Under POSHAN Abhiyaan, the budgetary allocation is for programme components like ICT Application, Convergence, Community Mobilization, Behavioural Change & Jan Andolan, Capacity Building, Incentives and Awards, and Innovations.

1-Dec-2017: Cabinet approves setting up of National Nutrition Mission

The Union Cabinet has approved setting up of National Nutrition Mission (NNM) with a three year budget of Rs.9046.17 crore commencing from 2017-18.

Features:

The NNM, as an apex body, will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition related interventions across the Ministries.

The proposal consists of

• mapping of various Schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition
• introducing a very robust convergence mechanism
• ICT based Real Time Monitoring system
• incentivizing States/UTs for meeting the targets
• incentivizing Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) for using IT based tools
• eliminating registers used by AWWs
• introducing measurement of height of children at the Anganwadi Centres (AWCs)
• social Audits
• setting-up Nutrition Resource Centres, involving masses through Jan Andolan for their participation on nutrition through various activities, among others.

Major impact: The programme through the targets will strive to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anemia and low birth weight babies. It will create synergy, ensure better monitoring, issue alerts for timely action, and encourage States/UTs to perform, guide and supervise the line Ministries and States/UTs to achieve the targeted goals.

Benefits & Coverage: More than 10 crore people will be benefitted by this programme.  All the States and districts will be covered in a phased manner i.e. 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20.

Financial Outlay: An amount of Rs. 9046.17 crore will be expended for three years commencing from 2017-18. This will be funded by Government Budgetary Support (50%) and 50% by IBRD or other MDB. Government budgetary support would be 60:40 between Centre and States/UTs, 90:10 for NER and Himalayan States and 100% for UTs without legislature. Total Government of India share over a period of three years would be Rs. 2849.54 crore.

Implementation strategy and targets: Implementation strategy would be based on intense monitoring and Convergence Action Plan right upto the grass root level. NNM will be rolled out in three phases from 2017-18 to 2019-20. NNM targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively. Although the target to reduce Stunting is at least 2% p.a., Mission would strive to achieve reduction in Stunting from 38.4% (NFHS-4) to 25% by 2022 (Mission 25 by 2022).

Background: There are a number of schemes directly/indirectly affecting the nutritional status of children (0-6 years age) and pregnant women and lactating mothers. In spite of these, level of malnutrition and related problems in the country is high. There is no dearth of schemes but lack of creating synergy and linking the schemes with each other to achieve common goal. NNM through robust convergence mechanism and other components would strive to create the synergy.