Cash may replace food in nutrition scheme

The Centre is toying with the idea of giving cash benefits instead of nutritional benefits to Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) beneficiaries, including malnourished children and pregnant and lactating mothers. Government think tank National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog had mooted the idea and now the Women and Child Development Ministry has forwarded the proposal, along with a few others, to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). 

If approved, the project will first be implemented on a pilot basis in a few districts. The other suggestions included increasing the per day benefit emolument for each beneficiary. 
It has been revealed that before making the recommendations, the NITI Aayog had carried out a set of consultations with representatives of states, health experts, NGOs, and WCD and Health ministries, late last year. One of the key areas discussed included linking of Aadhaar to beneficiaries of nutrition schemes. 
But, apparently, the WCD ministry is not too keen on the idea of cash benefits for ICDS beneficiaries. A WCD official said the monetary scheme is highly unlikely to be a success. “It is unlikely that the parents will use this money for the purpose of nutrition,” the official said. 
Meanwhile, WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi on Friday announced the real-time tracking of maternity benefits scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, directly linking beneficiary mothers to the Centre. 

The WCD Ministry has also prepared a set of guidelines to tackle malnutrition, which is due sometime in the first week of September. Among the host of amenities that will be overhauled is packaged food for anganwadi centres. The food packets will bear bar-codes pre-printed by the Centre. The move is aimed at stopping pilferage of packaged food, a WCD official said. 

“The state will be responsible for deciding what is food and who will manufacture it. The Centre will send out recipes indicative of nutritional requirements,” the official added. 
The idea of packaged food, announced in 2015, has met with a lot of criticism from states, especially Maharashtra, where the state WCD Minister Pankaja Munde has been accused of permitting sub-standard food.