The Centre’s proposal to replace supplementary nutrition provided at Anganwadi centres with cash transfers or packaged foods (to be delivered through post offices) will hurt India’s fight against malnutrition as well as women’s employment, according to the Right to Food Campaign (RFC), an umbrella of over a hundred rights groups and individuals.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the RFC, while welcoming the recent increase in the budgetary allocations for supplementary nutrition under the Integrated Child Development Scheme, said this money should be spent on decentralised food in the form of hot cooked meals or nutritious take-home rations.

“A decentralised system allows community monitoring and would also create employment opportunities for rural women,” said the letter adding that this would ensure greater food variety.

“Cooked meals also contribute to the process of socialisation with children learning to eat together and can enable breaking of caste barriers,” said the letter, adding that the provision of food rather than cash through the Anganwadi centres would also contribute to the “reduction of unpaid work burden on women.”

The letter cites recent experience with cash transfers (from NREGA wage payments and pension schemes in Chandigarh and Puducherry), where many beneficiaries have been facing payment delays.

Calling for strengthening the ICDS programme, the letter urged the Prime Minister to ensure that additional funds are used for “decentralised and locally accountable production rather than being allowed to be misappropriated by private packaged-food contractors”.

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