Around 100,000 girls between the ages of 11-14, who dropped out of school, have now been brought back to the mainstream education system in India, according to government sources. The drop-out rate in this age group has significantly reduced over the years, with 1.14 crore girls reported in 2013-14, decreasing to five lakh in 2020-21, 3.8 lakh in 2021-22 and finally down to approximately 100,000 in July last year. This drop reflects the removal of fake beneficiaries and incorrect entries. The Scheme for Adolescent Girls, which covered the 11-14 age group, has now been discontinued and replaced with a revised scheme as a part of the Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 Mission.
As a part of the revised scheme, 22.40 lakh adolescent girls in the 14-18 age group in aspirational and northeast region districts have been identified, with 19 lakh Aadhaar seedings already completed. The Poshan Tracker, which monitors and tracks activities of anganwadi centres, has 9.38 crore Aadhaar-seeded beneficiaries out of a total of 10.06 crore. Additionally, 10 lakh anganwadi centres have been geo-tagged, with efforts to tag the remaining centres ongoing.
The government is also working on designing an age-appropriate take-home ration for children up to six years, with a proposal sent to the finance ministry. Migrant workers are to receive Aadhaar-seeding so that they can benefit from the anganwadi scheme throughout India. So far, 57,000 migrant workers have started to benefit from this initiative.
To make anganwadis (‘courtyard shelters’) ‘saksham’ (meaning ‘capable’ or ’empowered’), 2 lakh have been identified for improvement by 2025-26. In the first year, the goal was to upgrade 40,000 such shelters. Instead, 41,000 anganwadis were made ‘saksham’ in 2022-23, and the number is expected to reach 81,000 by year-end. A programme to upgrade mini-anganwadis to full-fledged centres has also been initiated, with 1.60 lakh mini anganwadis identified for upgrade.
Despite these improvements, the figures for malnutrition remain inconsistent. While the National Family Health Survey-5 claims that 7.7% of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, and 19.3% of children cumulatively suffer from severe acute malnutrition and moderate acute malnutrition, data from the Poshan Tracker shows that only 2.27% of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition and 7.06% from both severe and moderate acute malnutrition.
