WCD to release annual report on nutrition status of country from March 2019: Secretary

The Women and Child Development Ministry has decided to release an annual report on the status of nutrition in the country from March next year to counter "alarming reports" that keep coming from private organisations time-to-time, a senior WCD official said.

Women and Child Development Secretary Rakesh Srivastava said the National Institute of Nutrition has made a preliminary presentation on what they will have in the report.

"Its format would be finalised by the end of the month and in March next year the first report would be released. They will do an independent survey just like the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and the parameters have been decided and it will be translated into a detailed project report," he said.

"We have engaged the National Institute of Nutrition because from time-to-time alarming reports keep coming from private organisations based on unverified and unsubstantiated reports about the state of India's nutrition," he said.

Srivastava said to put all these controversies at rest "we have commissioned the national institute for nutrition and every year in March we will come out with the status of nutrition in India during that year".

He said the move has been undertaken to reduce dependence upon the NFHS.

"You know the NFHS data takes about three years to come so in a ministry we do not have so much time to wait for 2-3 years to know the status of nutrition in the country. We have moved beyond NFHS, now we will be using ICDS-CAS data and thereafter we will be making our own report. It will be on the basis of online and real-time data," he said.

The software 'Integrated Child Development Services-Common Application Software' (ICDS-CAS) started in May and has been operating in 57 districts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The software will help draw nutrition profile of each village and aims to address the problem of malnutrition on a permanent basis. The system will get real-time reports from the grassroots level.

By the end of March, this software will also have an in-built component of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) and it will be one of the first softwares in the country with an in-built AI, another WCD official said.

Speaking to reporters on the completion of the Poshan Mah, Srivastava said about 20 lakh activities were performed to promote nutrition among children and about 27 crore people have been reached.

Next Wednesday, the ministry plans to distribute awards to about 180 people who have emerged as champions in promoting nutrition across states.

The 'Poshan Abhiyaan' has been tasked with bringing down stunting of the children in the age group of 0-6 years from 38.4 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022.

He also said that in a recent survey of anganwadis, it was found that in Uttar Pradesh about 70-80 lakh less beneficiaries were found as compared to the previous year's requirement.

This report, dealing with various parameters of nutrition, will now be compiled annually to give more frequent feedback on status of nutrition in the country.