The Government has accorded high priority to the issue of malnutrition and is implementing several schemes like Anganwadi Services, Scheme for Adolescent Girls and Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) under the Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme as direct targeted interventions to address the problem of malnutrition in the country.
The beneficiaries under the Anganwadi Services scheme are children in the age group of 0-6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers. The supplementary nutrition is provided to pregnant women & Lactating mothers in the type of Take Home Ration. Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) is implemented with an aim to provide cash incentive to improve health seeking behaviour amongst the Pregnant Women & Lactating Mothers (PW&LM) and compensate for partial wage loss.
Further, POSHAN Abhiyaan launched on 8th March 2018, aims to achieve improvement in nutritional status of Adolescent Girls, Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers in a time bound manner by adopting a synergised and result oriented approach.
Mission Poshan 2.0, an integrated nutrition support programme has been announced in budget 2021-2022 for all States/UTs. It seeks to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcomes with focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition. Steps have been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing in accredited labs, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under Poshan Tracker to improve governance. Guidelines were issued for transparency and accountability in delivery of supplementary nutrition and to track nutritional outcomes on 13.01.2021.
The details of funds allocated to State/UTs and expenditure under the POSHAN Abhiyaan from FY 2018-19 to 2020-21 is at Annexure-I.
This information was given by the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.
