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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A new app is failing India's fight against child malnutrition -Aarefa Johari

A new app is failing India's fight against child malnutrition -Aarefa Johari

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published Published on Oct 13, 2021   modified Modified on Oct 13, 2021

-Scroll.in

Anganwadi staff need funds for infrastructure and supplies. Instead, the government gave them a new app that is riddled with problems.

On the afternoon of August 23, the Chhota Sion urban health centre in the heart of Mumbai’s sprawling Dharavi slum was suddenly awash with pink. Nearly 80 women, all dressed in saris and salwar suits in various shades of the colour, trooped into its lobby.

Breaking up into groups, they spent two chaotic hours packing old Panasonic Eluga i70 cell phones into small cartons, labelling each box with lists of their names. Then, one group at a time, they made their way up to the second floor of the building, marched into a spacious government office and deposited the boxes in the corner of a room. “This is not a protest,” one of them declared emphatically. “We are not raising any slogans or banners. We are just giving the mobiles you gave us back to you.”

The women were workers who helm anganwadis, government-run creches for children below the age of six. These anganwadis, which number over 13 lakh in India, were established under the four-decade-old programme called the Integrated Child Development Services, or ICDS, which aims to improve the health and nutrition status of children in India. The country has one of the worst rates of child undernutrition in the world – in 2020, India was ranked 94th out of 107 countries in theGlobal Hunger Index.

The office where the women had deposited the cell phones belonged to the area’s Child Development Project Officer, typically responsible for supervising between 90 and 100 local anganwadis.

The phones had been given to the anganwadi workers in 2019, under Poshan Abhiyaan, a scheme that has brought several existing nutrition programmes, including the ICDS, under one umbrella. Launched by the Narendra Modi government in 2017 with the financial support of the World Bank, the scheme aims to reduce stunting among children below six, which stood at 38% in 2016, to 25% by 2022.

What was new about its approach was a focus on technology as a tool to tackle child malnutrition. It introduced a mobile app for anganwadi workers to maintain digital records on the nutritional status of children and women.

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Scroll.in, 13 October, 2021, https://scroll.in/article/1007521/a-new-app-is-failing-india-s-fight-against-child-malnutrition?fbclid=IwAR1Iq_sCqYIBL2vKBaRnbrBttC2sb_V8zv4wtYt_8JYShOsypb2PIdQla5k


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