From screening diabetes, blood pressure to taking stock of secondary schools with electricity or schools providing textbooks, Niti Aayog has planned to launch a campaign to assess the improvement at the most underdeveloped localities across India, News18 has learnt. According to a letter written by BVR Subrahmanyam, Chief Executive Officer of the government’s think tank NITI Aayog, has conceptualised “Sampoornata Abhiyan”, to carry out a campaign to achieve saturation in “six identified indicators” in districts and blocks.
“The duration of the initiative begins from 1 July 2024 to 30 September 2024,” said the letter, dated June 19, accessed by News18.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) in 2018 to quickly and effectively transform the 112 most underdeveloped districts across the country. Based on the learnings from ADP, the Aspirational Blocks Programme (ABP) covering 500 Blocks, was launched in January 2023.
The letter said that both programs focus on improving governance to enhance citizens’ quality of life and improve service delivery in India’s remotest and less-developed districts and blocks.
The campaign at the block level targets achieving indicators such as timely registration of pregnant women for antenatal care, regular intake of supplementary nutrition by them, and screening the block’s population for diabetes and blood pressure whereas at the district level, its targets include immunisation of children, secondary schools with functional electricity, and schools providing textbooks within one month of the academic session’s start.
“One way of accelerating progress is to focus on a few select indicators at one time and saturate them so that one can see quick impact,” Subrahmanyam wrote in the letter sent to district magistrates and district collectors of aspirational districts and blocks.
“The Hon’ble Prime Minister had also suggested the same,” he added.
How The Campaign Will Work
The decided campaign “Sampoornata Abhiyan” will work to improve six indicators in districts and blocks. “To make this effort successful and to deliver a tangible impact on the ground”, the CEO has instructed districts and blocks to develop a three-month “action plan” in accordance with the identified indicators.
In these blocks, district officials will further track the progress on saturation each month. Further, these localities will implement awareness and behaviour change campaigns and the district officials will conduct concurrent monitoring field visits.
The six indicators for blocks to achieve during the campaign include a percentage of pregnant women registered for antenatal care within the first trimester, pregnant women taking supplementary nutrition regularly, soil health cards generated against soil sample collection target and percentage of persons screened for diabetes and hypertension against the targeted population in the block.
Sharing similar indicators, district programmes also include targets such as the percentage of children fully immunised starting from 9 to 11 months, the percentage of schools with functional electricity facilities at the secondary level and the percentage of schools providing textbooks to children within one month of the start of the academic session.
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