Kohima: Nagaland botched its Integrated Child Development Services scheme between 2018 and 2024. A new Comptroller and Auditor General report exposes systemic rot. The state lacked basic infrastructure and service delivery. It failed to track beneficiaries.
Officials never conducted a household survey to identify eligible participants. Of the 3,980 active Anganwadi Centres, every one of the 46 sites audited lacked mandatory facilities like kitchens or sanitary space. Most centers went without pre-school kits or books. Some locations opened for only two days a month. The government offered only vague promises. The CAG slammed this approach, noting, "The Government said in June 2024 that shortcomings identified through a beneficiary survey would be used to improve implementation, but the CAG said the response lacked concrete corrective measures."
Inventory management proved equally disastrous. The Social Welfare Department paid a supplier 2.45 crore rupees for food items that never arrived. Medicine kits worth 2.81 crore rupees lack distribution records. Uniforms and badges totaling 1.36 crore rupees vanished without a paper trail. These lapses deprived children and mothers of critical healthcare services.
Digital tracking failed to bridge the gap. The state burned 3.43 crore rupees on Aadhaar seeding, yet only 14.51 percent of the 547,228 beneficiaries exist in the system. The Poshan Tracker covers just 28 percent of those enrolled. Poor connectivity and broken equipment derailed progress. Oversight is non-existent. Key committees stopped meeting years ago. The state never even formed the mandatory Child Development Society. This institutional failure left funding unchecked and programs toothless.
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