Govt to release annual reports on state of nutrition in India

The Centre will for the first time release annual reports on the state of nutrition in the country, officials said today.

The Executive Committee under the 'POSHAN Abhiyaan' headed by Secretary, WCD Ministry, Rakesh Srivastava in a meeting yesterday took the decision to launch a survey on nutrition and release reports on the same every year, a statement from the Women and Child Development ministry said.

The committee took significant decisions on implementation of the PM's Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment (POSHAN) scheme, including a series of meetings to be held on Ambedkar Jayanti (April 14) about gram panchayats across the country. The topics of nutrition, sanitation and other health issues were also raised at the meeting.

"All the gram panchayats will be advised to weigh the children and display their weights in the Anganwadi centres," the statement said.

The committee also decided that instead of blindly adopting the nutritional practices of other countries, the best practices of states across the country which are successful in reducing stunting, anaemia and malnutrition are to be studied, and successful models are to be adopted at the national level.

For special focus on the deprived sections of society, district collectors will hold a detailed survey of the people who are outside the Anganwadi system, the committee said.

This mission is to be implemented phase wise, the ministry said.

In 2017-18, 315 districts will be covered followed by 235 more districts in 2018-19 - and the target is to cover all remaining districts by 2019-20, it added.

Representatives of chief secretaries of various states and other convergent ministries attended the meeting.