As per the ‘State of the World‘s Children 2015’ report published by United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the level of children who are underweight, stunted and wasted are 44, 48 and 20 per cent respectively. However, this Report is based on 2005-06 data of National Family Health Survey-III conducted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Further, in the Rapid Survey of Children (RSoC) conducted by Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) in association with UNICEF in 2013-14, these figures are 29.4, 38.7 and 15.1 per cent respectively.
The prevalence of malnourished children in India is thus one of the highest in the world. The Indian government accords high priority to the issue of malnutrition and is implementing several schemes/programmes of different ministries and departments to address one or other aspects related to nutrition.
MoWCD is administering the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a centrally sponsored scheme, which aims at holistic development of children below six years of age and pregnant women and lactating mothers by providing a package of six services comprising – supplementary nutrition, pre-school non-formal education, nutrition and health education, immunization, health check-up and referral services. The scheme is implemented through the states.
The ICDS Scheme started in 1975 was universalized in 2008-09 preceded by rapid expansion in the years 2005-06 to 2008-09 so as to cover all habitations, including scheduled caste/ scheduled tribe and minority population, across the country with the approval of 7076 ICDS Projects and 14 lakh Anganwadi Centres. Against 7076 sanctioned projects and 14 lakh sanctioned Anganwadi Centres, 7067 projects and 13.49 lakh Anganwdi Centres were operational by the end of 2015. The services are currently being provided to 10.23 crore beneficiaries of which 8.37 crore are children under age of six years and 1.93 crore are pregnant women and lactating mothers. Pre-school education is provided to 3.54 crore children of 3-6 years (1.78 crore boys and 1.75 crore girls).
In order to improve the performance of ICDS, the government has introduced five-tier monitoring and review mechanism at different levels (national/state/district/block/anganwadi) by involving public representatives for monitoring the status of Anganwadi Centres.
In order to address various programmatic, management and institutional gaps and to meet administrative and operational challenges, the Indian government approved the strengthening and restructuring of ICDS Scheme in September 2012 with an over-all budget allocation of Rs.1,23,580 crore during 12th Five Year Plan.
The goal of ICDS Mission is to attain three main outcomes namely – prevent and reduce young child under-nutrition (per cent underweight children 0-3 years) by 10 percentage point; enhance early development and learning outcomes in all children 0-6 years of age; and improve care and nutrition of girls and women and reduce anemia prevalence in young children, girls and women by one fifth.
The Ministry is also implementing Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG) Sabla and Indira Gandhi Matratav Sahyog Yojna (IGMSY) as direct targeted interventions to address the issue of malnutrition.
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.