Abstract:
The aim of the study is to develop a spatial location model for enhancing the
efficiency of Anganwadi Centres (AWCs).
Objectives include:
1. To study and explore the level of service provided for Anganwadi Centres
(AWCs) based on identified indicators.
2. To spatially locate and analyse the proximity of Anganwadi Centres
(AWCs) with respect to the settlements.
3. To examine the level of service provided by Anganwadi Centres (AWCs)
with respect to their spatial locations.
4. To propose a spatial location model for Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) to
enhance its efficiency.
Contributions of work towards academia, is the question asked to begin with a
dissertation justification and validation. To riposte, a work to make academia
contribute to the society fits and suits the thesis topic chosen.
Overall, all-round development is the most coveted when talking about an
individual child‘s development. This all-round development is per say the
responsibility of the parent guardian of the child to be able to take the
development of the child responsibly and seriously, in order to make the child
physically and mentally fit to take the challenges of life.
Therefore, in order to achieve these responsibilities by the guardians, a facilitator
needs to function in the backhand for the entire life process of development to
function without hindrances. This facilitator in this process is the government of
the nation, which is especially abled to provide access and opportunity to each
and every person to be able to give their children a well-deserved opportunity for
overall development. Intended to open this prospect for every individual of the nation, the government
has launched schemes which work in favour of every single individual to bring
their children in the best fit line. Likewise, one such scheme is the Integrated
Child Development Scheme (ICDS) which was launched under National Policy
for Children in 1975 so as to validate the latter.
Under ICDS, the government opened Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) which aimed
to:
1. To improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-
6 years;
2. To achieve effective co-ordination of policy and implementation amongst
the various departments to promote child development;
3. To lay the foundation for proper psychological, physical and social
development of the child;
4. To enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and
nutritional needs of the child through proper nutrition and health education.
5. To reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school
dropout;
The services provided by these Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) are Supplementary
Nutrition, Referral services, Nutrition & health education, Pre-school non-formal
education, Health check-up and Immunization.
The only guidelines which these AWCs followed was adhering to the population
threshold wherein 800-1000 population required one AWC in any plain areas and
300-400 population required one AWC in hilly areas.
This dissertation focuses on enhancing the marks of the governmental prospects
chosen to facilitate the all-round development of the child in the overall nation
without any disparity between race, caste, creed and most importantly any area,
being an urban land or a rural village. Physical Planning in this dissertation will act as a tool to provide with Social Planning; because the first orientation about
Planning teaches that it is a Social Science.
Therewith to adhering to the first impression of Spatial Planning, this project has
been chosen to fulfil the needs of population in the Social Sector, making it more
of Social Planning.
The work started with reviewing the literature which with the same prospect of the
government gave minimum literature in terms of Spatial Planning, all the literature
available talked in terms of Sociology. Hence the task of bringing a Sociological
topic to spatial planning gave another challenge of incorporating the two subjects
together through a bridge called statistics.
Substantially, sociology and physical planning came together through statistical
tools like chi-square test, linear regression and multiple regression analysis. The
conjoint together gave chance for the analysis to function properly to give the
appropriate inferences proving the point of connection between the variables to
be true. Whereby giving the spatial connection through centrality measures with
the beforehand proven variables justified the spatial variables with the functional
variables to prove and validate the connection.
Alongside, the proposals were being worked to recommend suitable land for
AWCs which would increase the efficiency of these AWCs to decrease the
number of malnutrition children, increase the number of enrolment of mothers for
doses of iron during pregnancy and anti-dose of polio for children, etc.
The analysis of the study started with calculating the efficiency of each and every
Anganwadi Centre (AWC) of the study area, Sagar district. The efficiency was
calculated by normalising the data collected for the functional variables like age
of Anganwadi Workers (AWWs), experience of Anganwadi workers (AWWs),
training achieved by them, building type, separate play space, toilet area, food
storage, nutrition chart, immunization chart, weigh growth chart, etc. All these
functional variables were analysed along the efficiency calculated of each AWCs
with the help of Chi-Square test. The inferences highlighted were that the age of
Anganwadi Worker (AWW) affected the efficiency of the AWCs as the experience of the AWW was relative to the same. Likewise all the functional variables related
to the efficiency of the AWCs, some associated more strongly than the others.
Age of AWW held the strongest association with the efficiency of AWCs whereas
separate area for food storage was the weakest association as per the ChiSquare test.
Later, this efficiency and chi-square test results was used in the linear regression
analysis to validate the connection with the functional variables chosen to study
the relationship. Further to prove the relationship Multiple Regression Analysis
was calculated and recalculated to come down with an equation to symbolise the
relationship founded and analysed. The recalculations gave a strong connection
and association with the factors namely; education of Anganwadi Workers,
population covered by a single Anganwadi Centres, child population catered by
an Anganwadi Centres, attendees in an Anganwadi Centres and supplementary
nutrition provided by an Anganwadi Centres to combat the malnutrition prevailing
in the district. The equation was:
Y = 8.2 + (2.12)X1 + (-0.01)X2 + (0.04)X3 + (0.11)X4 + (0.10)X5
Where,
X1 = Education of AWWs
X2 = Population covered by AWCs
X3 = Child population covered
X4 = Number of attendees
X5 = Supplementary Nutrition
Further ahead spatial variables were analysed along the efficiency obtained using
GIS techniques and a vulnerability and risk assessment was done in the villages
of the selected Anganwadi Centres. The inferences were used to further analyse
the spatial variables with the functional variables to come down to an inference of
strong and weak associations with each other. These associations were used
later to give proposals along with the method of Weighted Overlay with added
importance to the inferences drawn from the functional and spatial variable analysis. The proposal will be provided with a toolkit which will include
mathematical relation as well as spatial relation.
This study aims to inculcate both Social and Science together to manifest the
sociological and physical needs of combatting the issues related to child-care and
maternal health care with the tool of Physical Planning.