Developing a spatial location model for enhancing the efficiency of Anganwadi centres (AWCS) : case of Sagar, Madhya Pradesh

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.