New Delhi: The Government has recently approved the setting up of new National Nutrition Mission (NNM) to address the problem of stunting, anaemia malnutrition in the country at a total cost of ₹9046.17 crore for a period of three years i.e. 2017-18 to 2019-20.
The salient features of the Mission are: (i) ensuring convergence with various programmes; (ii) incentivizing States/Union Territories for achieving targeted goals; (iii) Information and Communication Technology enabled Real Time Monitoring (ICT-RTM) of ICDS; (iv) Evaluation by NITI Aayog; (v) Setting up of National Nutrition Resource Centre (NNRC) at National level and State Nutrition Resource Centre (SNRC) in each State/Union Territory; (vi) Providing weighing scales to ensure weighing through real time alerts for prompt interventions; (vii) Community mobilisation awareness advocacy and Information Education Communication through local institutions, innovation and Jan Andolan by educating people on nutritional aspects, on-line Course on Nutrition for Children, Nutrition message from folk songs and songs on WASH, sending messages on nutrition and also creating ring-tones, Yoga for children at AWCs; (viii) strengthening human resource; (ix) measuring height and length of children below 6 years of age for early detection of stunting and wasting; and (x) strengthening of Training & Capacity Building, Community Mobilization & Behaviour Change & Communication (BCC) and Community Based Management of Severely Acute Malnourished (SAM) children.
Roll out of NNM: 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20. A total of more than 10 crore are likely to be benefitted from the Mission.
Targets: NNM targets to reduce stunting, under-nutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.
Earlier National Nutrition Mission lacked most of the above components.
The use of Aadhaar as identity document for delivery of services or benefits or subsidies simplifies the Government delivery processes, brings in transparency and efficiency, and enables beneficiaries to get their entitlements directly to them in a convenient and seamless manner. Aadhaar obviates the need for producing multiple documents to prove one’s identity. Aadhaar would be unique identified of the beneficiaries. However, the beneficiaries’ not possessing Aadhaar card would be assisted by the field functionaries to obtain the Aadhaar card. Till such time, they would be provided the Anganwadi Services on the basis of alternative identification document. This would help in individual and Aadhaar based tracking of children for nutritional outcomes and would also aid in area based tracking of under-nutrition status in the country.
NNM has Information Communication Technology based real-time monitoring system through Common Application Software (CAS) for effective operation of the system and to provide IT-related assistance to the field functionaries. Project Staff is assigned with task of Help Desks at District and Block levels respectively. To digitize and computerize the various data generated at the AWCs, Tablets and Smart Phones and other Information Technology (IT) related equipment are provided to Lady Supervisors (LSs) and Aanganwadi Workers (AWWs). For this exercise, AWWs are entitled for incentivize @₹ 500.00 per month for actually using these devices for collection of data.
This information was given by Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Dr. Virendra Kumar in reply to a starred question in Lok Sabha today.
