Cash to replace food for 140 mn children

Another 120 mn will need Aadhaar to get free meals

The NDA government is making dramatic changes in two schemes that provide dry rations and hot cooked meals to about 260 million children up to the age of 14 years.

For about 140 million children, aged up to six years, the government has decided to replace the provision of dry ration under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) with cash transfers.

For another about 120 million children, who are between 6 and 14 years, Aadhaar will be mandatory to get their daily hot cooked meals under the Mid Day Meal (MDM) Scheme. A notification was passed on March 1, making Aadhaar mandatory for children in the age group of 6 to 14 years studying in standard I to VIII to access free hot cooked meals. This will cover about 1.2 million government and government-aided schools.

Attorney-General (AG) Mukul Rohatgi informed the Supreme Court on Friday that the government planned to provide cash subsidy directly into mothers’ bank accounts instead of providing dry rations under ICDS. Intervening in a case relating to ICDS before Justice Deepak Misra, the AG said the Union government would file an affidavit before the apex court in four weeks, detailing the changes.

His intervention came after the Women and Child Development Ministry, which oversees the scheme, amended the regulations for ICDS under the National Food Security Law on February 20.

This was the first time that states got the option under the rules to give cash allowance in lieu of rations to children at anganwadi centres.

Under the MDM scheme, the government provides hotcooked meals to children aged 6-14 in schools on working days and also during summer vacations in drought-affected areas. The ICDS provides, besides other benefits, dry rations as supplementary nutrition to about 140 million children aged 0-6 through about 1.4 million anganwadi centres. Together, these two schemes are meant to provide food security to all needy children up to 14 years of age. These, along with the public food distribution system, come under the ambit of the National Food Security Act.

While the government has made Aadhaar mandatory for MDM, the Aadhaar-linked cash transfer is to be limited to ICDS, sources in the government said. Senior officials in the human resource development ministry said that cash transfer is not under consideration as replacement for food given to children under MDM. “It was considered once during initial review of the MDM scheme but it is not under consideration and we are not in its favour. Aadhaar has been introduced in order to cut down on pilferage of existing benefits,” an official told Business Standard. The notification passed specifically for MDM reads, “And whereas the aforesaid Mid-Day Meal scheme offered at schools involves expenditure incurred fully or partly from the Consolidated Fund of India…individuals desirous of availing the benefits under the Scheme offered at the Schools are required to furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar number or undergo Aadhaar authentication.”

Two other sources in the government told Business standard that the group of secretaries on ‘Health, Sanitation and Urban Development’ put together by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had also recommended cash transfers instead of rations under the ICDS scheme.