Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS): An Appraisal of Projects and Services in Andhra

Abstract 

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is one of the world’s largest and most unique outreach programs for early childhood care and development, which addresses the health, nutrition, and education needs of children, expectant, nursing mothers, and adolescent girls across the life cycle holistically. It symbolizes India’s commitment to its children. The first ICDS project was launched in India with 33 Projects all over the country on 2nd October 1975 and the ICDS project Jama Masjid was the milestone project for the state of Delhi. ICDS is India’s response to the challenge of breaking a vicious cycle of malnutrition, impaired development, morbidity, and mortality in children, working in convergence with other flagship programs such as NRHM, SSM, and others, has emerged as the most effective integrated program for contributing to the fulfillment of children’s rights to survival, growth, and development. This paper reviews the functioning and progress of Integrated Child Development Services and attempts to identify the program bottlenecks in Andhra Pradesh. An in-depth study was carried out in selected Villages & Anganwadis in Krishna District in Andhra Pradesh to assess the performance of the scheme, nutritional aspect & services being provided to Beneficiaries. Information was gathered from 5 supervisors, through primary sources like questionnaires, field visits, and informal discussions with AWWs. The Secondary data has been collected to evaluate the overall scenario and penetration levels of ICDS for the country and Andhra Pradesh and statistical analysis was carried out in the form of percentage and Growth rate. Since its inception, ICDS has expanded rapidly in its scope and coverage, and today it covers approximately 7.6 million pregnant women and lactating mothers and around 36 million children less than six years of age.

Keywords: Integrated Child Development Services, children, women, Anganwadi, Malnutrition, Project, Supervisors, Beneficiaries and Expenditure

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