More than half the funds for POSHAN Abhiyaan unutilised: NITI Aayog report

Less than half the funds set aside for the POSHAN Abhiyaan have been utilised by India’s states, according to the fourth progress report released by the NITI Aayog September 1, 2022.

States and Union territories (UTs) with poor distribution of mobile phones and growth monitoring devices emerged as those with low fund utilisation. More than half the funds (60 per cent) remained unutilised until March 31, 2020, the report noted. The scheme has an earmarked three-year budget of Rs 9,046.17 crore from 2017-18.

The Union government’s flagship scheme was launched in 2018 and aimed to improve the nutritional status of children, pregnant women, lactating mothers and adolescents.

Only three states had used more than 50 per cent of their POSHAN Abhiyaan funds between 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. This improved marginally to 12 between 2017-2019 and FY 2019-2020.

State-wise comparison of the percentage funds utilised up to FY 2018-19 and FY 2017-18 and upto FY 2019-20

Source: NITI Aayog’s fourth progress report on POSHAN Abhiyaan

Nagaland (87 per cent), Meghalaya (78 per cent), Sikkim (71 per cent), Mizoram (67 per cent) and Lakshadweep (65 per cent) had utilised the maximum proportion of funds by the end of 2019-2020.

Punjab (22 per cent), Puducherry (22 per cent), Tripura (16 per cent), Arunachal Pradesh (9 per cent) and Odisha (8 per cent) were the poorest performers.

The amount of funds being utilised improved across most states and UTs — 30 of 35. It decreased in Telangana, Mizoram, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Puducherry.

“There is an immediate need to accelerate its use through channels like recruiting human resources, procurement of devices and conducting community-based events and information, education and communication (efforts),” the report noted.

Overall implementation status of the POSHAN Abhiyaan at the National Level in 2020

Source: NITI Aayog’s fourth progress report on POSHAN Abhiyaan

The report listed five key elements of the POSHAN Abhiyaan scheme:

• Deliver a high impact package of interventions in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life
• Strengthen the delivery of these interventions through technology and management
• Improve the capacity of frontline workers
• Facilitate cross-sectoral convergence to address the multi-dimensional nature of malnutrition
• Enhance behaviour change and community mobilisation

Besides under-utilisation of funds, other indicators assessed in the report include system readiness and capabilities to deliver POSHAN Abhiyaan interventions — which has improved compared to previous progress reports — human resources, infrastructure, supplies, training, and capacity building.

On a scale of 0-100, only Punjab scored less than 50 among the large states, Arunachal Pradesh (36.25), Manipur (27.25) and Mizoram (37.00) were the poor performers among the small states while no UT scored less than 50.

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