BY ALEX BURNS, DANIELLE MINNETT, ALEX HARDIN AND NAYANTARA BHANDARI
Alex Burns, Danielle Minnett, Alex Hardin and Nayantara Bhandari are second-year International Development students who traveled to India to conduct analyses on the take-home rations (THR) program in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. The team is working with Sight and Life in order to create a policy and strategy compendium on THR for the Government of India. The compendium will provide states with insights on making their THR implementations more nutritious, cost-effective and sustainable for children as well pregnant and lactating women.
The IDEV Practicum allows students to work directly with public, private and non-governmental organizations as a capstone to their graduate studies. The 2020 IDEV Practicum Blog is a seven-part series that chronicles the travels of IDEV students who take on client projects over winter break.
Our practicum team worked with Sight and Life, a nutrition thinktank focused on providing evidence-based solutions for combatting malnutrition. Sight and Life was commissioned by Tata Trusts to compile and develop a compendium on the vast amounts of existing literature on the Government of India’s take-home rations (THR) program. The THR is part of the Government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), which has provided India’s poorest children and pregnant and lactating women (PLW) with a wide range of health, education and nutrition services since 1975. Today, the THR reaches over 70 million children and PLW, making it one of the largest supplementary feeding programs in the world.
In addition to the compendium, our team is responsible for analyzing two distinct THR supply-chain models: a centralized model in the State of Gujarat and a decentralized model in the State of Rajasthan. These case studies, along with insights from the compendium, will be used to develop a time-bound action plan and roadmap for ICDS officials to inform national government policy as well as develop state-level strategies on THR implementation. To that end, the compendium will be instrumental in providing states with a single synthesized reference for THR data and material. Moreover, state officials will be able to draw from the lessons learned in our case studies as well as implement the replicable successes outlined in our action-plan and roadmap.
In spite of jetlag, our team hit the ground running as soon as we arrived in India. We spent the first part of our fieldwork meeting with various stakeholders and government officials in Delhi in order to gain a holistic overview of the THR program, including perceptions, shortcomings and suggestions for improvement. In preparation for our visits to the States of Gujarat and Rajasthan, Nayantara, Danielle and Alex B purchased kurtas, as our client explained that the communities and organizations we planned to meet were very traditional. We had a lot of fun picking out different fabrics and designs!
Our team learned the true meaning of “rolling with the punches” after a minor change in fieldwork plans due to Master Chef India. The show was being filmed on the premises of the THR production facilities in Gujarat, forcing our team to shift around our schedule. Sadly, we were not invited. Nonetheless, we were eventually able to carry out enriching interviews with the centralized producer of THR in Gujarat as well as visit the various factories it operated (including a chocolate factory!). We spent the latter half of our time in Gujarat conducting interviews and focus groups in child care centers where THR are distributed and we gained valuable insights from beneficiaries as well as child-care workers. Finally, our team traveled to Rajasthan to interview stakeholders from JVS Foods, which previously provided THR to the state through a centralized tender before the state’s transition to a decentralized model. We spent the last day in Rajasthan at a child-care center interviewing beneficiaries and workers to better understand the processes of a decentralized model.
Although India’s THR program faces many challenges and shortcomings, we feel confident in the successes we uncovered during our visits to Gujarat and Rajasthan. We plan to leverage this information as we continue to build upon the foundations of our compendium in order to deliver relevant proof of concepts and an actionable roadmap for state officials. Most of all, we were inspired by the dedicated practitioners, workers and beneficiaries we met during our trip and hope to improve their overall wellbeing.
To read about the work that other IDEV Practicum teams did this year, visit this page.
Photo Credit: Sight and Life Practicum Team