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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anganwadis: A report card -Shradha Chettri

Anganwadis: A report card -Shradha Chettri

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published Published on Jun 19, 2017   modified Modified on Jun 19, 2017
-The Indian Express

The Indian Express visited 14 anganwadis, and found similar problems almost everywhere.

New Delhi:
A healthy meal and a stepping stone for school — anganwadis in the city have two key responsibilities. The Indian Express explores the problems at each front

Five-year-old Naseem does not go to school, but that doesn’t mean he can stay at home after breakfast. As soon as the clock strikes 9 am, Naseem leaves home, unenthusiastically dragging his feet across a small drain filled with plastic. He eventually reaches a small room on the ground floor of A block, New Seemapuri, in northeast Delhi.

Six others, some younger than Naseem, are already there, with an old fan and a rug to keep them comfortable. A few tattered charts with alphabets and numbers hang on the wall.

Naseem is greeted by his teacher (officially a ‘worker’), a woman in her 30s. She marks him ‘present’, and he sits down to play with the plastic toys scattered on the floor.

He spends the next four-and-a-half hours at the anganwadi centre (AWC), which is supposed to provide him supplementary nutrition and prepare him for Class I. But his mother, Shabana, has a grouse: “He has been going to the anganwadi for over two years. Forget learning the alphabets, he still doesn’t know how to hold a pencil, or colour.”

The Indian Express visited 14 anganwadis, and found similar problems almost everywhere.

Shabana still sends her son to the AWC because that is the only time she gets to do tailoring work. Her husband is a daily wager. The couple have three other children — two study in a nearby municipal school and one in a Delhi government school.

As Naseem plays, another woman walks in holding two children, aged three and four, by their hands. She makes them sit alongside Naseem. She is a ‘helper’ at the AWC, responsible for bringing children aged six and below from the neighbourhood to the centre — under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme.

Hard to swallow

The ICDS — under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and looked after by the WCD department in each state — has been in place since 1975. It was restructured under the 12th Five-Year Plan to ensure holistic development of children aged six and below.

The aim was to reduce anaemia and child mortality rate by giving supplementary nutrition — especially to malnourished children — and to improve early learning outcomes.

Naseem’s teacher is meant to keep children engrossed till 12.30 pm, when food arrives. She makes them narrate a poem, but eventually they get fidgety and say they want to go home. The two women assure them they will get food soon. Eventually, men carrying two steel containers walk in around 11 am.

The food is to be distributed to children up to six years and pregnant and nursing mothers in the neighbourhood.

Please click here to read more.

The Indian Express, 19 June, 2017, http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/anganwadis-in-new-delhi-a-report-card-early-childhood-education-meal-awc-wcd-4710839/


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