Grudging budgetary support disables India’s 1.4 million anganwadis from providing proper early childhood care and education to India’s 84 million children in the age group 0-5 years from poorest households

In 1976, former prime minister Indira Gandhi launched the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme under which anganwadis — essentially nutrition centres for lactating mothers and children in the age group 0-5 years from poorest households which were also mandated to provide pre-primary education — were established countrywide. Forty two years later, India hosts 1.4 million anganwadis which provide nutrition and rudimentary early childhood education to 84 million children i.e 51 percent of the country’s 164 million children in the age group 0-5 years.

Unfortunately, because of inadequate and grudging budgetary support from the Central and state governments, the country’s 1.4 million anganwadis — the large majority of whom are manned by an under-paid and under-trained solitary caretaker — have been unable to provide universal coverage or fulfill their mandate to offer early childhood education to poorest children. In the Union Budget 2018-19, the Central government allocated Rs.16,334.88 crore for the ICDS programme — a mere Rs.1,944 per child per year — a sum clearly inadequate to provide nutrition, leave alone professionally administered ECCE.

Ab initio, EducationWorld has been demanding and has also repeatedly published road maps for providing an additional Rs.110,000 crore for the ICDS programme. This year for the first time we present a ranking of Top 3 anganwadis in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The Delhi-based market research company Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore), which has conducted the EW India Preschool Rankings 2018-19, sounded selected ECCE experts and education NGOs to compile these truncated league tables.

Delhi
1. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Child Study Centre, Lady Irwin College
2. Nigam Nursery School, Krishna Nagar
3. Nigam Nursery School, Chandra Vihar

Mumbai
1. Balwadi, Maneklal Mehta MPS School, Ghatkopar (W)
2. Balwadi, Goshala MPS School, Goshala Road, Mulund (W)
3. Balwadi, Sainath Nagar MPS School, Sainath Nagar, Ghatkopar (W)

Bangalore
1. Anganwadi Kendra, Ashwathanagar, Hebbal
2. Anganwadi Kendra, Kavalbyrasandra, RT Nagar
3. Anganwadi Kendra, Hosur Road, Koramangala