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Being closed since the April 2020-lockdown, anganwadis are slowly reopening.

Anganwadi Working

• There are 14 lakh anganwadis, or centres provide basic healthcare and nutrition to mothers and children from low-income households.
• As part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), anganwadis play a crucial role in supporting households, particularly from low-income families.
• They provide number of services viz. childcare, health and nutrition, education, supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up and referral services.
• The largest in the world, ICDS covers about 88 million children aged 0-6 years in India. Their closure significantly impacted service delivery and weakened an important social safety net.

Importance of Anganwadis

• It was found in a survey conducted by IDinsight across five states in November 2018 and 2019 that anganwadi workers were a primary source of nutrition information for families.
• A recent study estimates that the time women spend on unpaid work may have increased by 30% during the pandemic.
• Early childhood, the period from birth to five years of age, is a crucial developmental window.
• As platforms for early childhood education and nutrition support, anganwadis can play an important role for children to achieve their potential.
• The National Education Policy, 2020, places anganwadis at the centre of the push to universalise access to early childhood care and education (ECCE).

Challenges faced by Anganwadis centres

• Often paid less than minimum wage.
• Anganwadi workers are overburdened with duties beyond their primary jobs, such as working for the census and other government schemes.
• Administrative responsibilities take up significant time, and core services like pre-school education are not given preference.
• A typical worker spends an estimated 10% of their time — 28 minutes per day — on pre-school education, compared to the recommended daily 120 minutes.
• NITI Aayog found that only 59% of anganwadis had adequate seating for children and workers, and more than half were unhygienic.

Way forward

• As anganwadis reopen, we must prioritise interventions with a demonstrated history of success, and evaluate new ones.
• Studies in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh (and globally) have found that home visits, where volunteers work with children and caregivers, significantly improved cognition, language, motor development and nutritional intake while also reducing stunting.
• Reaching out to women during pregnancy can increase the likelihood that their children use ICDS services – as tried in Tamil Nadu.
• More investment needs to be done so that more and more parents enrol their students in Anganwadi centres. And moreover, administrative works needs to be done away so that they can give to child in centres.