New Delhi: The Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently has approved the setting up of National Nutrition Mission (NNM) with a three year budget of Rs 9,046.17 crore commencing from 2017-18.
The NNM, as an apex body, will monitor, supervise, fix targets and guide the nutrition-related interventions across the ministries.
The proposal consists of mapping of various schemes contributing towards addressing malnutrition introducing a very robust convergence mechanism. The 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 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.
The programme through the targets will strive to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weight babies. It will create synergy, ensure better monitoring, issue alerts for timely action, and encourage States/UTs to perform, guide and supervise the line Ministries and States/UTs to achieve the targeted goals.
More than 10 crore people are expected to be benefitted by this programme. All the states and districts will be covered in a phased manner i.e. 315 districts in 2017-18, 235 districts in 2018-19 and remaining districts in 2019-20.