I can't forget my three day visit to Tamil Nadu a few months back. I was working on a project with the Government of Maharashtra to upgrade aanganwadi centres in the state. (An aanganwadi is village level public facility with a room and playing place for kids of age below six to receive supplementary nutrition and pre-school education). During our project we came to know that Tamil Nadu has constantly been the leader in the implementation of anti-malnutrition campaigns and to understand the details, the team headed for Coimbatore.
We were received at the Coimbatore airport by Miss Smitha, District Officer for ICDS (Integrated Child Development Service), Coimbatore. After a little freshening up in the district's circuit house and a tamil lunch, we moved on to aanganwadi visits. After about three hours of road journey, we reached a small village with average monthly income of Rs.2500. But the aanganwadi said a different story. There were no kids with grade 3 and 4 malnutrition and 80% children had normal body weight. Kids came every morning to have meal, play, learn and enjoy. There were innovative play-items prepared by the aanganwadi sevika which helped her teach the little kids lessons without books. The enthusiasm in the village about our visit spoke of the significance of aanganwadis in their lives.
We moved on to see ten more such villages in the next three days and every village taught us several lessons. Villages that had no stable occupations, tribal villages, villages remote from towns, all of them had fantastically run aanganwadis. Tribal villages had only 20% malnourished children as opposed to a national average of 42%. There was water supply and electricity at every home that we went. Government functions seemed to have worked.
I think there is a lot that I have learnt from tamil nadu, but it would take me enough pondering to pen them down in a systematic manner.
We were received at the Coimbatore airport by Miss Smitha, District Officer for ICDS (Integrated Child Development Service), Coimbatore. After a little freshening up in the district's circuit house and a tamil lunch, we moved on to aanganwadi visits. After about three hours of road journey, we reached a small village with average monthly income of Rs.2500. But the aanganwadi said a different story. There were no kids with grade 3 and 4 malnutrition and 80% children had normal body weight. Kids came every morning to have meal, play, learn and enjoy. There were innovative play-items prepared by the aanganwadi sevika which helped her teach the little kids lessons without books. The enthusiasm in the village about our visit spoke of the significance of aanganwadis in their lives.
We moved on to see ten more such villages in the next three days and every village taught us several lessons. Villages that had no stable occupations, tribal villages, villages remote from towns, all of them had fantastically run aanganwadis. Tribal villages had only 20% malnourished children as opposed to a national average of 42%. There was water supply and electricity at every home that we went. Government functions seemed to have worked.
I think there is a lot that I have learnt from tamil nadu, but it would take me enough pondering to pen them down in a systematic manner.
