Thirty-seven years after the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) to address the nutrition and health needs of children of 0-3 years of age, the nutrition profile of the population has not changed much.
Most policymakers and the implementing officers and field staff seem to be unaware of the spirit of the programme. Nearly everyone has missed the big picture. ICDS is the bedrock of all human resource development programmes taken up by the Indian State, says former Secretary to the Prime Minister K. R. Venugopal.
Mr. Venugopal was Joint Secretary in the Union HRD Ministry in charge of the ICDS before joining the PMO. He recently submitted a report on the programme's status to the State government after a social audit of its implementation in 129 villages in Anantapur district covering 150 Anganwadi centres.
“The perspective is lacking, we have reached a situation when our bureaucracy or the implementing agencies,do not anymore think of what a programme stands for and what major good it seeks to do for the people. I fear the approach these days is to look at the letter of the programme and not the spirit,” he said.
“For the Right to Education (RTE) to be a reality, the ICDS has to be effective in its support to the children of 0-3 age group. I believe ICDS is a logical extension of the RTE and the State is duty bound to deliver these rights of the child,” Mr. Venugopal said.
Faulty training?
He blames the training programmes for the officers for the situation. “Do they care to call men and women who have field level achievements in real life situations to talk to young recruits? The training bosses are into business management techniques as if human problems have technical and management solutions. As if field level tensions in a democracy are irrelevant,” he remarked.
He criticised the increasing reliance on technology as a solution for all problems. “Can there be anything more stupid than to claim that e-governance is the equivalent of good governance as is often done? Technology is an instrument in its variegated forms. It is important, but as an instrument, not as a panacea for all our evils. All governance is about human beings and if that human element is not taken as the starting point there will be only the kind of (mis)governance you see now in India,” the former bureaucrat concluded.
