Integrated Child Development Services’ name changed but governance hasn’t kept pace: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh

Marking 50 years of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, which was launched by the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Congress’s communications chief Jairam Ramesh on Thursday (October 2, 2025) said that while the scheme’s labelling had been changed, its governance had not kept pace. 

ICDS was one of the largest, if not the largest, child welfare programmes in the world, and over the decades, it was critical in ensuring tremendous improvement in India’s human development indicators, Mr. Ramesh said.

“The ICDS has since been renamed and subsumed under the Mission Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0. Unfortunately, the governance of the scheme has not kept pace with the name change,” the Congress leader said.

Flagging a report tabled on March 28 by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Women and Child Development, under the chairmanship of Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, Mr. Ramesh said there were several areas for improvement. Many of the recommendations made by the panel were also outlined by the Congress in its ‘Nyay Patra’ for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, including doubling the wages of anganwadi workers and helpers, Mr. Ramesh said.

The Congress had suggested hiring an additional worker for every anganwadi centre to focus exclusively on early childhood care and education, he pointed out. It had called for allocating sufficient funds for the ICDS, including the revision of the cost norms for anganwadi services, which was supposed to have taken place in the Financial Year 2020-21 but had still not taken place, despite the promise made in the Finance Minister’s Budget speech earlier this year, Mr. Ramesh said.

Anganwadi services should be extended to include day care and creche services for children above six months, he said.

The Congress had recommended increasing the number of anganwadi centres, he said, in line with the estimated population of the country in 2025, rather than relying on the 2011 Census figures. It had also called for a provision of hot, cooked meals rather than take home rations for all eligible beneficiaries of anganwadi services, Mr. Ramesh said.

“Today is ICDS@50. 50 years ago today, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). Today, there are 13.96 lakh Anganwadi Centres across the country which provide early education, health, and nutrition services to more than 7.65 crore children across the country,” Mr. Ramesh said in a post on social media platform X.