After much dilly-dallying, the ministry of women and child development’s ambitious proposal to pump massive resources into its hunger-related scheme finally got a push from the Planning Commission.
The ministry’s demand of over `2 lakh crores for restructuring its flagship scheme, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), was pending commission’s approval since November 2011.
As reported by this newspaper, the project appraisal and management division (PAMD) of the Planning Commission had earlier raised issues concerning weaknesses in the system. The objections of PAMD were backed by a study conducted by National Institute of Applied Economic Research on the ICDS scheme, which had pointed various loopholes in the scheme. However, after much deliberations between the ministry and the Planning Commission, the proposal finally got an approval from Planning Commission last week with some suggestions of improvement in it.
“While, the Planning Commission has supported the scheme by and large, it has suggested that states should be given more flexibility in running the scheme. Having got the comments of Planning Commission, we will now finalise the EFC memo and will soon submit it to the finance ministry,” sources revealed.
The ministry had proposed a four-time enhancement in allocation of funds with a view to add infrastructure, additional workers, establishing day care centres in it. The ministry had also proposed to convert the existing ICDS scheme from norm based scheme to “mission mode”.