Manmohan to look into new nutrition scheme

A new scheme to fight malnutrition and restructuring the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) are likely to be finalised at a meeting of a national council headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday.

Updated on: Nov 23, 2010, 23:30:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new scheme to fight malnutrition and restructuring the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) are likely to be finalised at a meeting of a national council headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday.

The council, which is meeting for the first time since its inception two yeas ago, will consider a new umbrella scheme — National Mother and Child Malnutrition Prevention and Reduction Programme — to reduce India’s malnutrition rate, pegged at 35.6 per cent, and anaemia among women, which is 55.3 per cent.

The Planning Commission had set a target to reduce the malnutrition and anaemia rates by half of its present level in the 11th plan ending 2012, but the country will not meet the target as per the mid-term appraisal of the plan.

In a last-ditch effort to achieve the target, the Prime Minister's Office got a national consultation of all stakeholders, whose recommendations to the PM’s council will be examined.

A key recommendation is to promote a rights-based approach with women’s empowerment as the mover of social change and focus on pregnant and lactating mothers.

The proposed mother and child nutrition scheme is aimed at synergising multi-sectoral interventions from existing schemes such as ICDS, National Rural Health Mission and mid-day meal and creation of new nutrition centres in each district. The new scheme will be rolled out with National Food Security law, it has been proposed.

The government is looking at restructuring ICDS in a bid to provide flexibility to the scheme in using resources in Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and National Rural Health Mission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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