The recent Government of India recommendation for monthly length/height measurements by anganwadi workers promises to be a disaster in its current form and might lead to a severe derailing of the existing system of data collection and management, leading to further chaos and misreporting on malnutrition.
The recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data from 22 states and union territories (UTs) of India has raised major concerns with the progress on the reduction of malnutrition in the country and has received extensive attention in the press and media. This has also served, once again, to highlight the important role that the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme plays in the health, nutrition, and well-being of women, children, and adolescents. The programme is widely held as an intervention that appears to be well-functioning and worthy of further investment, but at the same time it is a system that requires far greater coverage, quality, and impact to achieve acceleration in achieved outcomes (Drèze 2020).
ICDS, Malnutrition and Data
Comments
EPW looks forward to your comments. Please note that comments are moderated as per our comments policy. They may take some time to appear. A comment, if suitable, may be selected for publication in the Letters pages of EPW.