With the central government earmarking ₹21,960 crore in the Union Budget for the aforementioned schemes, the All-India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers said the “government’s claim regarding increasing the cost norms for nutritional support under the scheme is misleading and inadequate.”

The Union Budget for 2025-26 has earmarked ₹21,960 crore for the scheme, just ₹150.36 crore more than the ₹21,809.64 crore spent in 2023-24, the federation said. With inflation and rising costs, workers argue that this tiny increase does little to improve child nutrition or working conditions.

Anganwadi Mulazim Union Ludhiana (CITU) president Subhash Rani pointed out that cost norms for supplementary nutrition were last revised in 2017.

“Even with this so-called increase, for nearly 10 crore beneficiaries, which includes eight crore children and two crore pregnant, and lactating women, the actual rise in nutrition spending is just 5 paise per child per day after seven years,” she said.

Highlighting alarming malnutrition statistics, she said, “The government data itself shows that 37% of children under six years are stunted and 17% are underweight. Nearly 8.8 lakh children under five die every year in India due to malnutrition.”

Union’s general secretary Bhinder Kaur slammed the government’s failure to improve infrastructure. “In 2022, the government promised to build two lakh ‘Saksham Anganwadis’, but till now, even one lakh permissions haven’t been granted. As ICDS has been complete for 50 years, more than 3.38 lakh Anganwadi centers lack clean drinking water, and 4.61 lakh do not have toilets. Is this the vision of ‘Viksit Bharat’?” she questioned. Another union member criticised the government’s neglect of front-line caregivers