By IANS,
New Delhi : The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs Thursday gave its nod to implementation of the International Development Association (IDA) assisted scheme for boosting the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the country.
“The ICDS Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP) has been designed to supplement and provide value addition on the existing ICDS programme, through systems strengthening for better service delivery, as well as to allow the select States/Districts to experiment, innovate and conduct pilots of potentially more effective approaches for ICDS, to achieve early childhood education and nutrition outcomes,” a statement said.
“The total size of the project is Rs.2,893 crore with 70 percent IDA share of Rs.2,025 crore (USD$ 450 million) over 7 years. Estimated cost of phase 1 of the project is about US$ 151.50 million (Rs.682 crore) of which US$ 106 million is the IDA share (70 percent). Phase 2 of the project is currently estimated at Rs.2,211.29 crore, of which IDA share is Rs.1,547.90 crore (US$ 344 million). States will be bearing 10 percent of the project cost.”
“The project is proposed to be implemented in 162 districts having higher proportion of malnourished children in eight states – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh – along with urban pilots in and around NCR of Delhi and convergent nutrition actions pilots in some selected districts in two non-project states viz., Odisha and Uttarakhand.”