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Panchayat-Led Nutrition and Daycare Centres—The Fulwari Scheme of

Chhattisgarh

Technical Report · October 2014

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Samir Garg
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 Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen
and Harmonize Actions for Nurition in India

Implementation Note
No. 9 | OCTOBER 2014

Panchayat-Led Nutrition and

Daycare Centres—The Fulwari Scheme
of Chhattisgarh

BACKGROUND Chhattisgarh has a statewide program using

In Chhattisgarh, nearly 53 percent of children are community health workers called mitanins. The
stunted, 24 percent are wasted, and 48 percent National Rural Health Mission organizes the
are underweight. Additionally, nearly 18 percent payment of small stipends to the mitanins through
of infants are born with low birth weight (IIPS the panchayats and recognizes them as accredited
and Macro 2007), possibly because mothers are social health activists. The mitanins enjoy a high
undernourished before and during pregnancy. level of credibility with local communities through
High levels of poverty and women’s workloads their leadership of Village Health, Sanitation and
likely result in children getting neither essential Nutrition Committees (VHSNCs), which play an
nutritional care nor a diverse diet. active role in monitoring the status, services, and
behaviors related to the village’s nutrition and
Current interventions are not set up well to health.
alleviate this situation. While the Integrated Child
Development Scheme (ICDS) offers hot, cooked In 2012, to address the issue of undernutrition
meals and preschool education for children and harness the strengths of the actors working
in the area, the State Health Resource Centre,
ages 3–6 years at anganwadi centers (AWCs),
Chhattisgarh, a nongovernmental organization
the services for children under 3 years and for
providing long-term technical capacity to the
pregnant and lactating women are severely
Department of Health and Family Welfare, began
lacking. Children of this age group rarely come to
working with the panchayats of Surguja to create
AWCs, and the majority of them are not covered
community-managed feeding and daycare centers
under regular growth monitoring. While ICDS
called Fulwari (“flower garden”). The Collector and
does offer a take-home ration for pregnant and
Zila Panchayat of Surguja District were particularly
lactating mothers and children ages 6 months to
keen to start the initiative, as at the time, Surguja
3 years, this ration is only meant to supplement
had the highest under-5 child mortality rate in
the household diet, which often lacks high-quality
Chhattisgarh. The Fulwari scheme is now being
protein (eggs and milk), vegetables, fruits, oil,
scaled up across the state.
pulses, etc. The daycare centers for children under
3 years, as prescribed under the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act, have not progressed INTERVENTION
due to gaps in design and priority. For example, Fulwaris only start in villages where parents
the AWCs only run for 4 hours a day; thus, or mothers agree to run them by contributing
mothers cannot leave their children there and work their time. When the community agrees to start
full time. a Fulwari, the gram panchayat representatives
2
IMPLEMENTATION NOTE

and community adopt a resolution and send a of two eggs per week. Mothers also contribute
demand note to the block panchayat. To fund the nutrition powder from their take-home ration,
the activity, district panchayats release funds to which is fed to children at the Fulwari during
gram panchayats, which in turn release funds breakfast.
to VHSNCs headed by the Ward Panch and a
Two mothers volunteer each day to take care of
mitanin. The committees release funds to mothers’
children at the Fulwari for 6–7 hours, which allows
groups, which purchase utensils and supplies
the rest of the mothers to go to work. Thus, each
for the Fulwari, with the help of the mitanins in
maintaining accounts and records. The mitanins mother volunteers 1 day per week in the Fulwari.
also assist the auxiliary nurse midwives, anganwadi The mothers do not get any wages for contributing
workers, and accredited social health activists their time, but are allowed to have a meal at the
in providing deworming, iron supplements, Fulwari.
take-home rations, and health checkups at the The district panchayat reviews the program
Fulwaris. regularly during quarterly meetings of its General
Kitchen gardens at the Fulwaris are established Assembly. Block panchayats review the program
using inputs from the Department of Horticulture. monthly during meetings of the presidents and
secretaries of gram panchayats.
The Fulwaris provide daily three hot, cooked meals
to children age 6 months–3 years. Pregnant and
lactating women also get one meal a day at the KEY FINDINGS
Fulwari. The mothers create the menu, with the Beginning the Fulwari program was difficult at
stipulation that each day a green vegetable must first, mainly because it was difficult to convince
be fed to children, oil must be added in each (1) certain members of state- and district-level
feeding, and each child must consume a minimum government offices that malnutrition requires
 3
No. 9 | OCTOBER 2014

a multidepartmental action, and that it is not

only the responsibility of ICDS; (2) the panchayat
department, which is burdened with many large
programs for rural development, to be enthusiastic
about participating in another program, and
to release funds to the village committees; and
(3) the anganwadi workers that the Fulwari was
meant not to duplicate or undermine their work
but to complement their services.
However, after demonstrating that the program
could be led using the strengths of the community,
mitanins, and panchayats, stakeholders bought
into the program. By the end of 2013, 300
Fulwaris had been instituted in Surguja, reaching
approximately 3,700 children and 650 pregnant
women.
Based on the experience in Surguja and the
positive response from the community and
those involved, the Government of Chhattisgarh
decided to replicate the Fulwari model across
all the 85 tribal blocks of Chhattisgarh through
the panchayats. As of 2014, 2,800 Fulwaris
are functioning, reaching 35,000 children and
15,000 pregnant and lactating women. Currently,
the statewide rollout of the Fulwari program
is in progress. Zila Panchayats have organized that a nongovernmental organization and govern-
the district-level orientation program for block ment departments are working to facilitate the
panchayats, and in each block panchayat, gram process. Further research may be necessary to
panchayats are becoming oriented on how to run understand the full benefit of such approaches on
the Fulwari program. Mitanins and Ward Panchs child nutrition and development. For this purpose,
are conducting meetings at the community level data is now being collected and documented by an
to identify which communities are interested in external agency in collaboration with UNICEF.
organizing a Fulwari.
REFERENCES
LESSONS LEARNED AND CONCLUSION IIPS (International Institute for Population Sciences)
Thousands of children under the age of 3 in and Macro International. 2007. National Family
Chhattisgarh are now obtaining hot, cooked Health Survey (NFHS-3), 2005–06: India. Volume I.
meals, and the Fulwaris are offering an alternative Mumbai, India: IIPS.
child care option for working parents of younger
children. The Fulwaris have also provided an
opportunity for panchayats to learn more about
and appreciate the importance of local health
and nutrition. The intervention is unique in that it
brings together mitanins and panchayats as key
collaborators, trying to jointly achieve an objective
within communities. The experience shows that
panchayats can play an effective leadership role in
community-based nutrition interventions, provided
 ABOUT POSHAN
Partnerships and Opportunities to
Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for
Nutrition in India (POSHAN) is a 4-year
Partnership members: initiative that aims to build evidence on
Institute of Development Studies (IDS) effective actions for nutrition and support
Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) the use of evidence in decisionmaking. It
is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates
One World South Asia Foundation and led by IFPRI in India.
Vikas Samvad
Coalition for Sustainable Nutrition Security in India
ABOUT
Save the Children, India IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
Public Health Resource Network (PHRN) Implementation Notes summarize
Vatsalya experiences related to how specific
interventions or programs are delivered.
Centre for Equity Studies
They are intended to share information
on innovations in delivery and are not
research products.

CONTACT US
Email us at IFPRI-POSHAN@[Link]

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RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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WRITTEN BY T+91.11.2584.6565 to 6567
Samir Garg, State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh F+91.11.2584.8008

SUGGESTED CITATION IFPRI-HEADQUARTERS

Garg, S. 2014. Panchayat-Led Nutrition and Daycare Centres—The INTERNATIONAL FOOD POLICY
RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Fulwari Scheme of Chhattisgarh. POSHAN Implementation Note 9.
2033 K Street, NW,
New Delhi, India: International Food Policy Research Institute.
Washington, DC 20006-1002 USA
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This publication has been prepared by

POSHAN. It has not been peer reviewed.
Any opinions stated herein are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
This Implementation Note was prepared for the Together for Nutrition 2014: Working Across Sectors to Improve the policies of the International Food
Nutrition in India conference, held October 29–30, 2014, in New Delhi. This conference was co-hosted by POSHAN Policy Research Institute.
and Transform Nutrition and served as an important platform for learning and facilitating discussion around the
challenging task of bringing diverse sectors together to improve maternal and child nutrition in India. For more about Copyright © 2014 International Food
the conference and other papers on the topic of multisectoral convergence, please visit [Link] Policy Research Institute. All rights
About Transform Nutrition reserved. For permission to republish,
Transform Nutrition is a consortium of five international research and development partners funded by the UK contact ifpri-copyright@[Link].
government. Over 5 years, from 2012-2017, Transform Nutrition aims to transform thinking and action on nutrition
and strengthen nutrition-relevant evidence in order to accelerate undernutrition reduction in South Asia and sub-
Saharan Africa. For more information, please visit [Link].

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