National Nutrition Mission / Poshan Abhiyaan

National Nutrition Mission (renamed as POSHAN Abhiyaan) was set up in December 2017. It is a flagship program of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. This mission is aimed at improving the nutritional status of children from 0-6 years, Adolescent girls, Pregnant women and lactating mothers in a time-bound manner during a three year period starting from 2017-2018.

 Key proposals

• The NNM, as an apex body, will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition-related interventions across the Ministries.
• Mapping of various Schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition.
• Introducing a very robust convergence mechanism.
• ICT based Real-Time Monitoring system.
• Incentivizing states/UTs for meeting the targets.
• Incentivizing Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) for using IT-based tools.
• Eliminating registers used by AWWs.
• Introducing measurement of the height of children at the Anganwadi Centres (AWCs).
• Social Audits.
• Setting-up Nutrition Resource Centres, involving masses through Jan Andolan for their participation in nutrition through various activities, among others.

Key facts

• POSHAN ABHIYAAN will address three aspects—the food that should be given to rein in stunting, undernourishment, low birth weight and anaemia; the delivery system required for it; and monitoring of the entire process.
• Under the mission, the government is targeting a reduction of 2% a year in stunting, under-nutrition and low birth weight among 100 million people. Also, it aims to reduce anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls by 3% a year.
• The mission would include several components like an ICT (information and communications technology)-based real-time monitoring system, incentivizing of states and Union territories to meet their targets, social audits, and setting up of nutrition resource centres.

 Implementation

• Under the National Nutrition Mission, the ministries of women and child development, health and family welfare, and water and sanitation work together.
• The implementation strategy for the National Nutrition Mission was based on intense monitoring and a convergence action plan up to the grass-roots level.
• The programme is undertaken in a phased manner, covering 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and the remaining districts in 2019-20.
• National Nutrition Mission is implemented using information technology as the basic tool.

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The Progress and achievements till date

• All districts of 36 States/UTs have been covered for roll-out.
• State, District and Block level Convergence meetings are held regularly in most of the States/UTs.
• 17,477 Master Trainers have been trained.
• States/UTs are at various stages of procurement of smartphones. 3.2 lakh Smart Phones have been procured by the States/UTs.
• The guidelines /manuals of POSHAN Abhiyaan covering all aspects of the ICDS-CAS software, implementation, etc. have been formalized, printed and distributed up to district level.
• A ‘Call Centre’ has been established for interventions and beneficiary feedback.
• A comprehensive Jan Andolan Guidelines have been prepared in consultation with all partners and released to States/UTs and has been implemented by the States/UTs.
• Mass Media Campaign has also been rolled out through Television and Radio.
• September 2018 was celebrated as the Rashtriya Poshan Maah(Month) across the country.
• Under Incremental Learning Approach (ILA), functionaries have been trained on thematic modules following the cascade mode of training of State Resource Group (SRG), District Resource Groups (DRGs) and Block Resource Groups (BRGs 
• Community-Based Events (CBEs) are organized in a converged manner in Anganwadi Centres with the field functionaries. 

Conclusion

It is very important to invest in nutrition in India because a balanced diet and healthy nutrition play a pivotal role in the overall development of women and children. Healthy women deliver healthy children and nurture a good society, and healthy and nourished children are the country’s future. Therefore, to tackle under-nutrition problem in the country, various ministries need to work in convergence and not silos and  POSHAN ABHIYAAN is a platform to do so. POSHAN ABHIYAAN will ensure convergence and lead to better results.

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