Creches down to less than half over six years, less than 0.1% anganwadi kids benefit from the scheme

NEW DELHI: The 15^th finance commission envisaged 17,000 anganwadis cum creches (AWCCs) by 2025-26. Only 2,448 AWCCs (less than 15%) have been made operational till the end of July with over 52,000 beneficiaries.According to government data, nearly 9 crore children (0-6 years) were enrolled in anganwadis. Barely 0.06% of them have access to creche facilities. The projected population of children up to six years, the target population for creches, was roughly 16 crore in 2021.From 7,930 creches in June 2019, the number of creches has steadily fallen. Opening more creches was meant to boost women’s workforce participation, but answers to queries in Parliament show that the number of functional creches has been reducing. Uttar Pradesh, with high fertility and high child population, had no creches in 2019 and continues to have none. In fact, none have been approved. Many such states with high child population such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal and Odisha, which used to have several hundred creches, have become zero-creche states.By the end of July, the ministry of women and child development had approved 14,599 anganwadi cum creches (AWCCs) based on the proposals received from states and union territories. However, only a fraction of these have become operational, according to data presented in Parliament. For instance, 1,024 AWCCs have been approved for Jharkhand and 1,000 for Odisha, but none are operational in either state. In Telangana, 1,033 have been approved and only eight are functional with 63 beneficiaries. Rajasthan has no approved or functional AWCCs.Some states have standalone creches run by NGOs and aided by the central government. However, the number of such creches has been falling steadily. From 2,412 across India in 2023, these have come down to just 1,284. According to Niti Aayog, a majority of states have stated that they prefer to run anganwadi cum creches (AWCCs) instead of separate stand-alone crèches as it increases their financial, HR and administrative burden.Following allegations of irregularities in the management of creches and misappropriation of funds, the Rajiv Gandhi National Creche Scheme launched in January 2006 was discontinued by December 31, 2016. Before the scheme was discontinued, it was funding almost 25,000 creches with about 6 lakh beneficiaries, according to data presented to Parliament data in March 2017.From January 1, 2017, the ministry funded creche services through the National Creche Scheme, wherein stand-alone creches were operated as a centrally funded scheme with the Centre bearing 90% of the cost and the remaining 10% borne by voluntary organisations running the creches.However, since state or UT governments were not stakeholders in the scheme, it was felt that monitoring and supervision was inadequate. Hence, the women and child development ministry introduced the Palna scheme on April 1, 2022 “to provide quality crèche facility in safe and secure environment for children (from ages 6 months – 6 years), nutritional support, health and cognitive development of children, growth monitoring & immunization. Crèchefacilities under Palna are provided to all mothers, irrespective of their employment status”. Crèches are supposed to be open for 26 days in a month and for seven and half hours per day as per the work schedule of majority of mothers in the area.The funding ratio under Palna is 60:40 between union and state governments and UTs with legislature, except the North East and special category states, where the ratio is 90:10. For UTs without legislature, 100% funding is provided by the Centre. This funding pattern is probably why states and UTs with 90-100% central funding account for more than a third of operational creches.With the change in funding pattern, by 2019, the number of functional creches crashed to less than 8,000 and kept declining till it reached an all-time low of 2,163 creches (1,428 stand-alone creches and 735 AWCCs) in June 2024. Though this number had gone up to 2,448 creches by July-end this year, seven large states had zero functional creches while two, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana, had three and eight each.

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