Odisha cabinet approves ₹3,354-crore MSPY nutrition scheme after HC bashing
Though the Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana programme was announced in the current state budget with an allocation of Rs. 250 crore, it was raised by nearly 15 times after a two-judge bench of Orissa High Court last month castigated the state
The Odisha cabinet on Wednesday approved expenditure of Rs. 3,354.4 crore under the Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana (MSPY) to significantly alter the nutrition goals of adolescent girls (15-19 years), pregnant women & lactating mothers, severely acute malnourished and severely underweight children of under 6 years of age across the state over a period of five years.
The move comes a month after the Orissa High Court asked the Naveen Patnaik-led government in the state to take “all necessary measures to eliminate severe and acute malnourishment by the end of 2023”.
Though the Mukhyamantri Sampoorna Pushti Yojana programme was announced in the current state budget with an allocation of Rs. 250 crore, it was raised by nearly 15 times after a two-judge bench of Orissa High Court last month castigated the state over “1.16 lakh of its children still being severely acute malnourished and medium acute malnourished”.
In its order, the high court said, “The chief secretary would convene a meeting in the next one month to draw up an action plan to achieve the target of complete absence of severely acute malnourished children in Odisha and a reduction by more than half of moderate acute malnourished children in Odisha by the end of 2023.”
Chief secretary Pradip Jena said under the revised scheme, nutritional support such as eggs, laddoos and other nutrition supplements would be provisioned for all adolescent girls in the age group of 15 -19 years across the state. The scheme will begin this year and would be operational for the next five years.
“Additional ‘take home ration’ in the form of nutrient-rich food products, including millets, and additional eggs, would be provided to pregnant women and lactating mothers across the state. For children under six years, provisioning of augmented THR and additional eggs for severe acute malnutrition (SAM), moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and severely underweight children would be made. For adolescent girls, Kishori Melas would be organised at the ICDS project level for screening of nutritionally at-risk adolescent girls (Body Mass Index, MUAC), anaemia screening and other TEC/ SBCC activities,” said Jena.
SAM increases the risk of death in children under five years of age and can be a direct or indirect cause of child death by increasing the case fatality rate in children suffering from diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, malaria and measles.
MAM is when a child with 70-80% of median weight-for-height or has a mid-upper arm circumference of 115-125 cm. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-V released in 2021 found at least 18.1% of children in Odisha between 0 and 5 years suffer from SAM even though the numbers came down from 20.4 in NFHS-IV.
While hearing a PIL over malnutrition in Jajpur district last month, the division bench of chief justice Dr S Muralidhar and justice Gourishankar Satapathy said, “Human lives and human health should, in the present context, not be discussed in terms of percentages but by acknowledging that they are actual persons.”
The PIL was filed by an activist Mantu Das who alleged that young children, many of them belonging to the scheduled tribes in Danagadi Block of Jajpur district, were suffering from chronic malnutrition and living under “semi-starvation and prolonged hunger”.
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The HC pulled up the Odisha government on the matter of a child above six years of age getting excluded from the benefit of most of the schemes as it is presumed that a child over the age of six will be enrolled in a government school where he/she will get a mid-day meal.
Maintaining that specific age groups of children get ‘excluded’ from the benefit of many of the schemes, the high court observed that this is just a ‘presumption’ since there are statistics that show that there are a substantial number of children, and in particular girl children, who drop out of school or are not enrolled at all, to begin with.
“Again, as regards adolescent children, the benefit has been restricted to girl children between 14 and 18. In other words, instead of increasing the coverage of the schemes for all children in need from age 0 onwards. This requires a serious re-think at the level of both the Government of India and the State of Odisha,” the high court had said.