New Delhi: The press release by Ministry of Women and Child Development states to provide empowerment and protection to the women and children, who constitute 67.7% of India’s population and provisions to ensuring their all round development in a safe and secure environment, which is important for sustainable and equitable development of the country and also for achieving transformational economic and social changes.
The press release further said that the Ministry of Women and Child Development strives to ensure well-nourished and happy children along with ensuring confident, self-reliant women by providing them an environment which is accessible, affordable, and reliable and is free from all forms of discrimination and violence. The primary objective is to address gaps in State action for women and children and to promote inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral convergence to create gender equitable and child-centred legislation, policies and programmes, the release further read.
To achieve the above said objectives, Cabinet has approved three Umbrella Schemes of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which will be implemented in mission mode, viz., Mission Poshan 2.0, Mission Shakti and Mission Vatsalya.
Ministry of Women and Child Development and Mission Poshan:
Mission POSHAN 2.0 is an Integrated Nutrition Support Programme that seeks to address the challenges of malnutrition in children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and through creation of a concurrent ecosystem to develop and promote practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity. Poshan 2.0 seeks to optimize the quality and the delivery of food under the Supplementary Nutrition Program (SNP).
Mission Poshan 2.0 will contribute to human capital development and will address the malnutrition challenges. It will promote nutritional awareness and good eating habits for sustainable health and well-being. Furthermore, it will address nutrition related deficiencies through key strategies. Under the programme, the nutritional norms and standards of quality and testing of THR will be improved. Also, greater stakeholder and beneficiary participation will be promoted besides the traditional community food habits. Poshan 2.0 will bring three important programmes under its ambit, which are Anganwadi Services, Scheme for Adolescent Girls and Poshan Abhiyaan.
Mission Poshan 2.0 will focus on Maternal Nutrition, Infant and Young Child Feeding Norms, Treatment of MAM/SAM (Moderate Acute Malnutrition/Severe Acute Malnutrition) and Wellness through AYUSH. It rests on the strong pillars of Convergence, Governance, and Capacity-building. Mission Poshan will act as the key pillar for outreach and will cover innovations related to nutritional support, ICT interventions, Media Advocacy and Research and Community Outreach.
Mission Poshan 2.0 will integrate key strategies to fulfill its objectives, namely, Corrective strategies, Nutrition Awareness strategies, Communication strategies and Creation of green eco-systems. The objectives of Mission Poshan 2.0 will be realized through strong interventions driven confluent activities with key Ministries, Departments and Organizations.
Under the “Poshan Tracker”, digital infrastructure rolled out on 1st March 2021 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, through National e-Governance Division, will strengthen and bring transparency in nutrition delivery support systems. The technology under the “Poshan Tracker” is being leveraged for (i) dynamic identification of stunting, wasting and under-weight prevalence among children; (ii) tracking the last mile nutrition service delivery.
Mission Shakti anticipates a unified citizen centric lifecycle support for women through integrated care, safety, protection, rehabilitation and empowerment to liberate women as they progress through various stages of their life. Mission Shakti has two sub-schemes, namely, ‘Sambal’ and ‘Samarthya’. While the “Sambal” sub-scheme is for the safety and security of women, the “Samarthya” sub-scheme is for the empowerment of women.
The Sambal sub-scheme consists of the existing scheme of One Stop Centres (OSC), Women Helplines (181-WHL) and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP). Other than that, a new component of Nari Adalats has been added as women’s collectives to promote and facilitate alternative dispute resolution and gender justice in society and within families. The “Samarthya” sub scheme is for empowerment of women, which consists of existing schemes of Ujjwala, Swadhar Greh and Working Women Hostel. In addition to that, the National Creche Scheme for children of working mothers and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), which have earlier been under the Umbrella ICDS Scheme, are also subsumed in ‘Samarthya’.
