Integrated Child Development Services programme: A 50-year lifeline

At an anganwadi near Baiyappanahalli in Bengaluru, around 20 children, most of whom are between three and six years old, are busy playing, making merry, and having fun.

It’s hard to get their attention.

To Siddharth, I ask, “Why do you come to anganwadi?”

“To eat!” he says, (screams almost), without an iota of doubt.

“What do you like to eat?”

“Ice cream!”

He doesn’t seem to care much about the lunch at his anganwadi. But his friend, Nithu (who likes to be referred to as Dhanamma because ‘that’s what her dad calls her’) interjects.

“You will fall sick if you eat ice cream. I like anna sambar (rice and sambar),” she says.

“So, do you come to anganwadi for anna sambar?” I ask her.

“I come here to study,” she surprises me, and goes on to recite the English alphabet.

At another nearby anganwadi, 5-year-old Oviya approaches sheepishly with her notebook. True to her name, she seems to have an inclination for art. The book is filled with pencil drawings, most of them outlines of her own palm filled in with drawings of flowers and other filigree.

A million kids, a million hues. Anganwadis, the first step for many Indian children to nutritious meal, education and socialisation, have been operating for 50 years now, catering to all such hues.

A child is like a seed

When the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme was inaugurated 50 years ago by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, T. Narasipur in Mysuru was one of the first places in India where the pilot programme was launched.

The programme has come a long way since and seen remarkable progress in the southern State where anganwadi workers have played key role in shaping generations.

“Think of a seed that would one day grow into a healthy tree, a beautiful ecosystem in itself, nourishing everything around it. But if the seed itself goes bad, then what a huge loss that is. Every child is like a seed, and ICDS is the nourishment that would protect it from decaying,” says S. Varalakshmi, general secretary of the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH) and general secretary, CITU.

A national programme

ICDS is the world’s largest community-based programme for early childhood development. As of June 30, 2021, there were 9,06,16,953 beneficiaries under anganwadi services in India. In FY 2021-22, the BJP-led Union government restructured the programme into Mission Saksham Anganwadi & Poshan 2.0.

A first-of-its-kind programme combining health, education, and nutrition, the scope of ICDS has expanded over the years to offer a range of services, including a supplementary nutrition programme, pre-school education, immunisation of mothers and children, health check-ups, referral services, and health and nutrition education.

Scaling up through decades

Not vastly different from many other parts of the country then, in Karnataka, the programme was launched against the grim backdrop of prevalent infant mortality, malnutrition, and low literacy rates. The State, however, has been credited for taking proactive steps to scale up the programme rapidly.

From one project in T. Narasipur in 1975, the number increased to 24 across 20 districts by 1980, and more than quadrupled in the next decade.

While the primary focus of the programme is children below six years of age and pregnant and lactating mothers, in 1994-95, a special intervention was devised for adolescent girls using the ICDS infrastructure for the first time in Karnataka. The intervention focused on nutrition, health, educational, recreational and skill development of school-dropout girls aged between 14 to 18 years. The initiative, though, was later transformed and became targeted in nature, where the focus was only on adolescent girls in aspirational districts.

Today, Karnataka has 69,922 anganwadi centres across 204 projects catering to 40,54,456 beneficiaries. This includes 33,25,035 children between the age of 6 months and 6 years, and 7,29,421 pregnant and lactating mothers.

“Karnataka has some of the best anganwadi infrastructure in the country. A significant proportion of our total number of anganwadis are in their own building with their own kitchen, separate toilets, electricity connection and fans, and so on,” points out Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner.

Dasgupta, who previously served as Principal Secretary in the Department of Women and Child Empowerment, points out how the anganwadis in Karnataka, which remain open for 6.5 hours on weekdays, act as partial daycares, allowing mothers to work and thereby facilitating a socio-economic circle of empowerment. She says Karnataka is also ‘one of the better States’ as far as working conditions of anganwadi workers is concerned, with ‘a lot done over and above the ICDS scheme norms’ for the honorarium of anganwadi workers and helpers.

Changing focus

Although ICDS was conceived as a holistic programme, given the high rates of malnutrition in the country, the supplementary nutrition programme (SNP) remained the core of the programme and the most accessed service. Studies have shown enrolment increasing with regular delivery of SNP, and around 95% of the registered children are availing the supplementary nutrition. This doesn’t come as a surprise given how, even today, stunting is recorded among 37% of the children in India.

While SNP has been the backbone, the programme has been evolving to suit changing needs.

At an anganwadi in Bengaluru, Malar, who is ‘Malar miss’ for all the 21 children there, shows me the teaching and learning plan for the kids. One topic is covered every week. Last week, the kids seem to have learned about Children’s Day. This week is about ‘plants, trees and creepers’, and, in the next week, they will learn about ‘mountains, forests and rivers’.

With the idea of strengthening the ‘pre-primary education’ bit in anganwadis, the government has been taking steps to upgrade the teaching system.

In July 2024, 250 anganwadis in Bengaluru Urban were converted into ‘government montessories’. The pilot project looked at upgrading anganwadi centres into pre-primary education centres for children, providing quality education along with nutrition. The programme includes education in both Kannada and English, with each child provided a uniform, bag, and activity books.

“Parents are now looking for not only good nutrition, but also good education. So, we are also changing our focus, giving importance to pre-primary education in anganwadis and linking it with preparedness for schools,” says Shamla Iqbal, Secretary in Department of Women and Child Development.

The programme, according to officials, has been a hit, with the government now looking at expanding the programme to 5,000 centres.

Shamla Iqbal is quick to add that the focus on nutrition has not dwindled. “We are weighing the children regularly.  Wherever Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) rates are high, we have launched the Chiguru programme in co-ordination with the Health Department, UNICEF and IPE Global”.

According to official figures, around 1.3 lakh children in the State continue to be malnourished. The Chiguru initiative aims to involve the community and reduce malnutrition through programmes that include community engagement and provision of supplementary nutrition and medical support for severely malnourished children in the relevant places, including Ballari, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Belagavi, Raichur, Chitradurga and Vijayanagara.

Unique features

A number of initiatives, such as the Chilipili curriculum for pre-primary education and the Mathrupoorna scheme to provide hot meals to pregnant and lactating mothers, introduced to the ICDS programme in Karnataka, are unique to the State, say officials.

“Karnataka’s ICDS shows that when anganwadis move beyond rations to apex centres for ECD, nutrition, learning and protection, they can become a backbone of the child-rights architecture in the state,” says Dr. Zelalem Taffesse, chief of UNICEF Hyderabad Field Office.

While daycare for children below three years has been a missing component, the 4,000 Koosinamane creches set up in gram panchayats have been helping to fill this gap to an extent. These creches for children of women working in rural areas and under MGNREGA schemes were introduced as a collaborative effort involving multiple government departments, including the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR), Women and Child Development (WCD), and MGNREGA.

Funding cuts

Despite the impact it has had over the last 50 years, the programme is not without flaws, challenges or critics. One of the largest setbacks came in the form of funding cuts from the Centre.

The Central-State funding ratio for the scheme was changed from 90:10 to 60:40 by the BJP-led Union government in 2015, soon after it came to power, significantly impacting the components of the programme and leaving State governments to often rely on NGOs, development banks and philanthropies to run programmes.

“There are no funds currently for training programmes,” says a senior State government official who reveals how training programmes have been affected in several regions due to shortage of funds. “The Central Government used to provide the funding for training. That has not been coming now. We are trying to secure it as early as possible. Now, we are doing training with the help of NGOs, but these are not the same as the regular training provided by the department,” added the official.

Inadequate compensation

Activists and anganwadi workers have long been raising demands to raise the honorarium to minimum wage levels.

The regular duties of an anganwadi worker include providing supplementary nutrition to children under 6, conducting monthly growth monitoring of children, identifying malnourished children and providing follow-up measures, maintaining growth charts, facilitating mathrupoorna hot meals, counselling for mothers, and conducting pre-school learning activities. Additionally, they are also called in for census, survey and election duties.

“We receive an honorarium of only ₹11,000 per month, which is not even close to the minimum wage. On top of that, many don’t even get it regularly. Our jobs need to be made permanent, and we need to be treated as government employees with all benefits,” demands Renuka Patil, secretary of the District Anganwadi Workers’ Union in Yadgir.

While the State’s share in the anganwadi worker’s compensation is ₹8,300, the Centre’s is just ₹2,700. For a helper, this corresponding amounts are ₹4,900 and ₹1,350.

“It’s been 50 years, and it’s high time this scheme becomes a law,” says Varalakshmi.

“While the role of ICDS in early childhood care is undeniable and laudable, even after 50 years, it continues to be a welfare scheme. That puts the beneficiaries at the mercy of officials, which shouldn’t be the case. Access to nutrition, health, food and pre-primary education should be a right, not welfare,” she points out, while noting that there has been no increase in the Centre’s share of honorarium in the last seven years.

Better infra needed

An anganawadi near Domlur, managed by Kavitha, seems to be well-maintained and hygienic, but the children could do with more space. She points to a newly constructed two-storey building about 50 metres away.

“We were supposed to move to that building. Currently, the anganwadi is located in a rented space, but the new one is ‘own building’. It has a kitchen on the first floor and enough space for the children on the ground floor. The work got over in January, but the building lacks an electricity connection. Besides, a few electric wires pass too close to the structure.”

Activist and founder of Civic Bengaluru, Kathyayni Chamaraj, notes that despite improvements, infrastructure at several centres continue to be inadequate.

“It is important to upgrade the infrastructure at anganwadis and to also include daycare centres for children below three years. Koosinamanes are located at gram panchayats, which may not be close to all. Whereas anganwadis are more in numbers and distributed closely. It is important to have creches within anganwadis and bring all these under the Women and Child Development Department,” she says.

One of the latest points of contention has been the face registration system for beneficiaries. As per reports, the introduction of the system has left out around 2% of the beneficiaries, which comes to around 5,00,000 persons.

“FRS has become a hurdle in distributing foodgrains. On top of it, we have now been instructed to upload details of beneficiaries in Poshan Tracker, which is proving to be an additional burden,” says H. Padma, district president of the anganwadi workers’ union in Raichur.

An unfinished product

Amid shortage of funds, the State Government is planning to hold a grant celebration on November 28 to honour 50 years of ICDS. On the other hand, several anganwadi workers are planning to hold a strike on December 1 outside the residence of Union Ministers from Karnataka.

Meanwhile, according to CNNS data, 12.4% of children below five years of age in Karnataka continue to be severely stunted, and 4.6% are severely wasted (extreme malnutrition).

“Children continue to be affected by malnutrition, but not at the levels seen in 1975. Today, we see that in many cases it is happening not due to extreme poverty, but due to lack of awareness among parents. We are continuously engaging parents and working towards solving this,” says a WCD official. “Then, there are also reasons such as child marriages and inter-generational poverty in regions that have been in a disadvantaged position for years. It’s a vicious cycle. We are working on those too, but those changes will take time.”

(With inputs from Ravikumar Naraboli)