Mal Nutrition& Integrated Child Development Scheme.

Mal nutrition is a condition that results from not having balanced Diet.Persons become susceptible to Mal nutrition if their Diet does not provide them with required Calories,Vitamins,Minerals,and Micronutrients.As per the remarks from the World Food Progamme"A malnourished person finds that his/ her body has difficulty in doing normal things such as growing and resisting Diseases.Physical work becomes problematic and even learning abilities can be diminished. For women,pregnancy becomes risky and they can not be sure of producing nourishing breast milk.Malnutrition at an early stage reduces physical and mental development during childhood.Iodine deficiency is stated to be one of the main causes of mental retardation and Brain damage. Undernutrition affects school performance and very often affects income from work when they become adults.Undernutrition is also a cause for women giving birth to Low weight Babies" With a view to overcoming these kind of difficulties in the carriers of children and women an Integrated Child Development Scheme ( ICDS) was introduced in India in 1975.It is India's primary Social Welfare Scheme sponsored by the Government of India to tackle Malnutrition.The main beneficiaries of the scheme are children below 6 years ,pregnant women and lactating mothers. The Mid day Meal Scheme also is more or less a similar welfare measure for school children. Recently the former Central Minister for Environment and a senior person in the UPA had said that in the last 10years the malnutrition among children had reduced From 45.2 percent to 30 percent during the rule of UPA as seen from a concealed report from UNICEF which is unreleased by the present Government because it also describes the Gujrat state as shockingly below even as compared to Bihar. The child Immunisation level in Gujrat was too low to reveal.Out of 29 States in which the survey was carried out ,the Gujrat State ranked 21. Jayaram Ramesh also claimed that the Child Mainutrition Is still very high And unacceptable in India,but it had come down significantly because of Social sector Programs like ICDS,Mid day meals Schemes in Schools and Janani Suraksha Yojana which were given Highest priority by the UPA Government. He also said about much unwise cut of Allocations drastically in the Budget presented by the BJP/RSS(NDA) Government for the financial year 2015-2016 as Indicated below: 1)Allocation for ICDS from Rs.18,000 Crores reduced to just Rs.8,000 Crores. 2)Allocation for Mid Day Meals from Rs3,000 Crores reduced to just Rs.1,200 Crores. Based on the above ,Shri Jayaram Ramesh raises two valid issues such as that for the 14 months of rule of the NDA,Goverment the facts have been suppressed from the people much against the Principles of Democracy and this obviously was with the intention of not bringing into light about the achievements of the previous Government This alone was not the reason behind hiding the survey report,says Jayaram Ramesh,but with a view to not letting Public know about the failure of the state which was ruled by the present Prime minister. Let It be anything.But even if the above are allegations from Sri.Jayaram Ramesh, there is a big threat to the nation, especially in regard to Children and Women, in cutting the allocation drastically. In every state this would help to turn into a tragedy for Women and Children for want of funds to provide Nutritious food for children.Similarly, women especially pregnant would suffer for want of Funds which were available to them during the regime of the previous Government. Following the pattern of Gujrat's much- touted Record in respect of other states in India does not appear to have any reasonable logic behind it. INDIA is the most populous Democracy in the World.It is a federal Constitutional Republic Government under a Parliamentary System consisting of 29 States and 7 Union Territories.Depriving them of the benefits and facilities Available until now by reducing the availability of funds instead of increasing it does not appear to be fitting to the democratic principles of a Nation. Women and Children are the Essence of the basis of Growth of a Nation. Sreedharan Mundanat 19th of July 2015