ICDS: Steering an Ungainly Ship

R Venugopal, formerly with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and former secretary to the prime minister of India, reports here on a social audit of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. As we know from other reports, the account here is a good representation of ICDS performance throughout the country.

As stated early in the book, the purpose of the social audit is “to see whether the scheme is achieving its stated o­bjectives”. Of course, the answer was already well known. The audit confirmed the obvious weaknesses, and o­ffered a deeper understanding of them. The shortcomings of ICDS are well-documented, in this book and elsewhere.