On the Poshan Tracker – Mother, child and the Poshan Tracker

Source: This post on the Poshan Tracker has been created based on the article “Mother, child and the Poshan Tracker” published in The Indian Express on 6^th November 2023.

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper 2 Social Justice – Issues relating to poverty and hunger.

News: This article discusses the important features and significance of the Poshan Tracker. It also highlights challenges that will need to be tackled in order to ensure its success and suggests steps for the same.

A detailed article on India’s hunger situation can be read here.

What is the Poshan Tracker?

The rollout of the Poshan Tracker represents the largest mobile-phone nutrition monitoring system in the history of global health.

The Poshan Tracker is a centralised ICT-enabled platform, developed to promote transparency and accountability of nutrition service delivery, as part of the new Poshan 2.0 guidelines.

Its features include:

1. Last-mile delivery of nutritional services
2. Real-time feedback loop for frontline functionaries to prevent malnutrition by better identifying, targeting and monitoring of ICDS services.

iii. Precursor for targeted investments in healthcare for women and children.

More on the Poshan 2.0 Scheme here.

What is the significance of the Poshan Tracker?

1) Universal uptake — Anganwadi workers are using the app across all states and Union territories.

2) Massive scale — Real-time monitoring of more than 50% children in the country is being undertaken. Moreover, 94% of beneficiaries have been Aadhar verified.

3) Holistic coverage — It captures 3 more indicators.
a. Anganwadi infrastructure.
b. Beneficiaries of take-home rations and hot cooked meals.
c. Monitoring of nutritional outcomes.

4) Highly detailed data (or Granularity): The granularity of Poshan Tracker data is key in addressing the huge variability in malnutrition rates estimated through household-level surveys.

5) Better utilisation: It makes beneficiary-wise data that is observed on the ground, available for decision-makers for local and timely action.

6) Accuracy: The app automatically calculates nutritional levels based on the WHO growth charts. It can reduce errors in their manual calculations.

7) Timeliness: It avoids paper-based reporting, enabling real-time transmission of data. For instance, it is easier to retrieve information from it as compared to bulky paper-based registers.

What are the challenges associated with the Poshan Tracker?

1) Quality of data: Doubts about data quality have been identified as a major hindrance to using nutrition monitoring data for informed nutritional policies.

2) Limited Window of data utilisation: Global experience shows that decision-makers do not place a high value on data that are 3-5 years old.

What needs to be done?

Feedback mechanisms: It must be ensured that the Poshan Tracker is routinely updated based on the feedback of Anganwadi workers to improve user-friendliness.

Skill-building and technical assistance: It will be needed to ensure the sustainability of this new monitoring system.

Investments in service delivery: Adequate investments in delivering essential services when malnutrition is detected.

Question for practice:

In the 2023 Global Hunger Index (GHI), India ranks a lowly 111 out of 125 countries. How can Poshan Tracker help in improving India’s ranking?