Anganwadi Services under Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme implemented by States/UTs providing a package of six services, namely, (i) Supplementary Nutrition; (ii) Pre-school Non-formal Education; (iii) Nutrition & Health Education; (iv) Immunization; (v) Health Check-up; and (vi) Referral Services to all eligible beneficiaries, namely, children in the age group of 0-6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers through the platform of Anganwadi Centres across the country. Three of the services viz. Immunization, Health Check-up and Referral Services are related to health and are provided through NRHM & Public Health Infrastructure.

The Scheme today operates through a network of 7074 fully operational Projects and 13.91 lakh AWCs as on June, 2022. The services are currently being provided through 12.72 lakhs Anganwadi Workers and 11.69 lakhs Anganwadi Helpers to 951.35 lakh beneficiaries of which 770.98 lakh are children under six and 180.37 lakh are pregnant women & lactating mothers. Till June 2022, a total number of 303.17 lakh children of 3-6 years were covered under pre-school education of which 154.67 lakhs were boys and 148.50 lakhs were girls.

In order to make the programme more effective and to ensure that all benefits including supplementary nutrition should reach to the intended beneficiaries, Government has taken steps 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 to improve governance. States/ UTs have been advised to ensure that the quality of supplementary nutrition conforms to prescribed standards laid down under Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and regulations made thereunder. A programme to support development of Poshan Vatikas at Anganwadi Centres to meet dietary diversity gap and leveraging of traditional knowledge and AYUSH practices has also been taken up.

Various interventions are being taken from time to time by the Government for effective implementation of the Scheme and ensuring that the intended benefits reach the beneficiaries. In this regard, Streamlined guidelines were issued on 13.01.2021, covering several aspects such as quality assurance, roles and responsibilities of duty holders, procedure for procurement, integrating AYUSH concepts and Data management.

A robust ICT enabled platform named Poshan tracker has been designed to capture near real-time data on implementation and monitoring of Anganwadi Services across the country. The Poshan Tracker management application monitors the activities at the Anganwadi Centre (AWC), service deliveries of Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) and facilitates complete beneficiary management.

The total funds released for the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services is as under:

(Rupees in Lakhs)

Financial Year	Funds released for Supplementary Nutrition
2019-20	866117.82
2020-21	896321.89
2021-22	929516.93
2022-23*	814400.14

*As on 30.01.2023

 

This information was given by the Union Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

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SS/RKM

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