Disruption of rice supply threatens mid-day meals at Wayanad Anganwadis

Wayanad: A severe disruption in rice supplies has triggered fears that thousands of children attending Anganwadis in Wayanad may soon go hungry. The crisis, which began in April, has hit local early childhood care centres hard, with officials blaming a reduction in the central government allocation and a data-logged standoff over a tracking application.

While ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) officials admit that the supply bottleneck is not uniform across all centres, the ground reality remains grim in several parts of the district. The root of the immediate crisis lies in a data-entry failure on the Poshan Tracker app, which is used to monitor child attendance and determine the required food quota.

App glitches and worker protests
Under the scheme, each child is entitled to 100g of rice daily. However, the allocation for April, May, and June depends strictly on the attendance figures uploaded in April. During this crucial period, Anganwadi workers were on strike, demanding new smartphones to replace their outdated handsets. Consequently, attendance data was not uploaded to the central Poshan app.

ICDS authorities claim they urged the trade unions to call off the strike, but the plea was rejected. Although the government provided new SIM cards to the workers, they failed to distribute new smartphones. At present, workers are forced to run the official app on their personal phones using the government-issued SIM cards, a workaround plagued by severe network connectivity issues in Wayanad's hilly terrains.

Workers shell out personal savings
Despite the supply freeze, Anganwadi staff have been striving to keep the kitchens running. Government guidelines mandate that children be served nutritious meals like egg biryani, pulao, ada, and kozhukatta. To keep these promises, many workers are currently spending their own money to buy provisions, a practice they say is unsustainable.

There are around 800 Anganwadis in Wayanad, catering to nearly 10,000 children. Workers warn that the impact will be catastrophic in tribal regions, where children rely heavily on these daily meals for nutrition. While there is a suggestion to procure rice and groceries using funds from local self-government bodies, staff point out that this is highly impractical due to procedural delays.

The smartphone dilemma
The staff emphasise that the lack of proper smartphones is severely affecting the smooth administration of Anganwadis. The last batch of official smartphones was distributed in 2018, and most of these devices are now completely unusable.

"The protest was inevitable," a worker said. "We only received new SIM cards, but you need a working smartphone to run the Poshan app. Many of us cannot afford to use our personal devices for heavy administrative tasks, especially with the poor network coverage in many parts of the district."