Page 53 - Winning The Nutrition Battle

Skilling & Training:

Capacity Building

Almost all government programs in India depend on last-mile connectivity -- the
thread between public goods and services and the people it is meant for. While this
delivery can be effective in urban and semi-urban areas, where people have a higher
level of education and awareness, it starts to crumble when there is extreme poverty
and inequality.

The reason for the failure is that the only conduit in the highly underserved pockets
are community workers who themselves are only marginally better in terms of
literacy or the ability to access resources.

As an example, a constantly deprived set of people may be tribals in a remote area
of the country. There is a high chance that the community worker, while literate, may
not have the skills to deliver Poshan Abhiyan to plan.

This could be as simple as not knowing how to identify that a child is stunted
because the child looks healthy. Or, it could be not knowing what sort of foods should
be recommended to an anemic woman.

To overcome this, the government has devised an Incremental Learning Program,
in which various aspects of program implementation and measurement are taught
in small packages, so that each anganwadi worker gets progressively better at
delivering program outcomes.

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