SC committee: The “rot is systematic”, food provided is nutrition deficit

World’s biggest nutrition scheme, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), is riddled with corruption in giving contracts in four big states. Also, the ready to eat food being provided is nutrition deficit; Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2012, 18:38:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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World’s biggest nutrition scheme, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), is riddled with corruption in giving contracts in four big states. Also, the ready to eat food being provided is nutrition deficit, a Supreme Court appointed committee has found, urging the court to constitute a special investigation team to look into the “politician-bureaucracy and contractor nexus”.

The report of Biraj Pathnaik, principal advisor to the office of SC’s food commissioners, based on a ground study in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka and testing of food samples by central government’s Hyderabad based National Institute of Nutrition, says the “rot is systematic” and people responsible for “stealing food from children of poor and marginalized communities” in the country should be booked.

The report shows that how Uttar Pradesh government helped Great Value Foods owned by Ponty Chadda, who with his brother Hardeep Singh were killed in their farmhouse in south Delhi last month, to garner contracts for providing supplementary nutrition under the Central government’s ICDS scheme in violation of Supreme Court orders.

Despite the Supreme Court banning procurement of food from contractors in 2004, the report said, the UP government gave contract to Great Value Foods, which set up a processing plant in Bahraich district for supplying ready to eat food to anganwadis in Gorakhpur and 11 other districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh.

“The food being supplied does not contain the nutritional ingredients it claims to contain and the weaning food is not particularly suitable for babies,” the report said with reference to Chadda’s company. The company with registered office in Delhi was not available for comments despite repeated attempts. The report also pointed out the government favoured other private contractors through its tendering process.

In Karnataka, the report quoted state Lokayukta police to claim that three state women and child development department officials received bribe from a private contractor for tampering with the tendering process and later for supplying poor quality food. They “acquired properties” from the ill-gotten money, the report said.

The report also belied the impression has been created in Karnataka and Gujarat that the ready to eat food was being supplied by women self-help groups. It said the reality was that the contractors were supplying substandard food to anganwadi centers and in Gujarat the tendering process excluded women groups from bidding by seeking special blending of fortified food.

The claims of the state government and private producers of children getting good quality food had fallen flat with the National Institute of Nutrition certifying most samples to be nutrition deficient on several counts.

The vitamins were below detectable limit in all samples from Maharashtra and UP. Similarly, samples from all four states were deficient in proteins. “The energy level was 40 % less in samples for Gujarat and 30 % less in Maharashtra,” the report said, adding that the results show serious gaps in quality of ready to eat food being supplied in anganwadi centers.

“We reiterate our concern for the health, nutrition and life of millions of children in India, in the larger public interest we again request the Supreme Court to set up an independent Special Investigation Team (SIT) to enquire into the matter,” said NC Saxena and Harsh Mander, special commissioners of the court.

Samples proved to be nutrition deficit

Energy Deficiency: in 40 % samples from Gujarat, 30 % samples from Maharashtra, 23.5 % samples from Uttar Pradesh and 20 % in milk formula in Meghalaya.

Protein deficiency: 25 to 35% in all samples, except from Meghalaya.

Vitamin A and K: Vitamin A is below detectable limits in all samples from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Vitamin K is below detectable limit in samples from Gujarat.

Other facts

Central government spends over Rs 10,000 crore every year under ICDS to improve under six child nutritional levels.

Despite 30 years of the scheme, India has world’s highest malnutrition rate of 42%.

Corruption and pitfalls has pushed the central government to launch a restructured ICDS from next year.

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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