A Study on Supplementary Nutrition Ration for Women under ICDS Scheme in Rural Punjab

Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which has been operating in the all districts of Punjab for decades. Under the present study Supplementary Nutrition ration component of ICDS had been evaluated in the light of the objectives, to assess the availability of regular Supplementary Nutrition ration for women in Anganwadi centres, number of days for distributing supplementary nutrition from 1^st January to 31^st December, 2011 and percentage of the enrolled pregnant and nursing women coming to receive supplementary nutrition. For the study, two rural ICDS projects; namely Sehna ICDS project and Mehal Kalan ICDS project were selected from Barnala district of Punjab. The study was conducted during August to December 2012. A total of 20 Anganwadis (10 from each ICDS project) were selected on the basis of random, which was working at least the last 20 years. The present study is primarily based on primary sources of information. It can be seen about the availability of supplementary nutrition ration for the women at AWCs that the emerging scene is not very good. It was found that only 30% AWWs were getting SN ration in time during 1 Jan 2011 to 31 Dec 2011. It was shocking to note that a high majority (95%) of AWWs did not distribute SN ration for 300 days in a year as they were supposed to under the rules. Both the projects put together, 30.36% nursing mothers and 32.14% pregnant women did not regularly receive SN ration from the AWCs. Thus, the availability of SN ration for pregnant women and nursing women at AWCs was unsatisfactory.