Workshop: Assessment of Bihar’s ICDS Supplementary Nutrition Programme

This workshop was an opportunity to disseminate the findings from the study ‘Quantitative assessment: Beneficairy nutritional status and performance of ICDS Supplementary Nutrition Programme in Bihar’, undertaken by IDinsight.

Attendees from both the policy and research communities heard about the level of funds mising from the Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP); the quantity of nutrition actually received by the beneficiaries of the programme and the nutritional level of beneficiaries. Although it has long been believed that there is huge amount of leakage in the ICDS programme, this study was the first to both quantify the extent of leakage in different components of the SNP and to identify the main sources of the leakage.

Following the presentation, Navin Kumar, Former Director, Centre for Good Governance, Government of Bihar closed the ensuing discussion by highlighting five points that had emerged from the workshop:

• The findings of the study confirm the general perception that the ICDS programme in Bihar is not working well and the results indicate precisely the areas where matters have gone wrong.
• The performance of the programme should be monitored using outcome data rather the inputs; there is need to develop a reliable technique of measuring key outcomes.
• The Jeevika model should be tried out to see whether it is effective in improving the performance of the ICDS programme.
• Other aspects of the ICDS programme, especially the need for increasing awareness related to nutrition and health, should not be neglected.
• Greater use of technology to monitor the programme could be very effective.

The agenda and full event report are available for download below. The full poject report is available here.