MORE THAN four in ten women in India, between the ages of 18 and 40 years, suffer from malnutrition related conditions. This has inter-generational consequences, for instance, undernourishment in pregnancy increases the likelihood of delivering an underweight child, who may have long-term health consequences. India has recognised the importance of women’s nutrition through legal protections, and welfare schemes; however, there remains a gap between entitlement and access. This article explores how recent changes in scheme design have contributed to this gap.
Women’s nutrition is a legal entitlement
Nutrition is recognised in the Constitution and its Part IV i.e. the Directive Principles of State Policy require the State to improve nutrition levels. Courts meanwhile have expanded the “right to life” to include access to necessities like adequate nutrition.
Accordingly, Parliament enacted the National Food Security Act, 2013 (‘NFSA’), that grants pregnant women and lactating mothers a statutory right to nutrition support, and maternity benefits. Courts have, time and again, reinforced the significance of this, noting its intergenerational implications and importance to societal welfare. Accordingly, they held that states were constitutionally obligated to reopen ‘Anganwadi Centres’ (‘AWCs’) through which nutrition is provided, once Covid-19 restrictions by the Government of India (‘GoI’) had been lifted. Further, recognising the vulnerability of women beneficiaries and barriers faced in contesting non-delivery of benefits, the Court placed the onus on states to ensure access.
Nutritional entitlements for women outside motherhood remain limited, unless they are eligible to receive food grains as members of priority households. Priority households are vulnerable families identified under Section 10 of the NFSA and receive benefits such as subsidised/ free food grains through the public distribution system.
Presently, two schemes form the backbone of India’s nutritional support framework for women during motherhood: Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 (‘Poshan 2.0’) and Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandna Yojana (‘PMMVY’). Both are implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (‘MWCD’), but operate in different ways to improve nutritional outcomes.
Change in scheme design of Poshan 2.0
Since 1975, even before the NFSA, the Integrated Child Development Services (‘ICDS’) programme, provided supplementary nutrition to children, and pregnant women/lactating mothers through local AWCs. Following its universalisation in 2008-09, any pregnant woman/ lactating mother could visit an AWC to receive take home ration (THR). ICDS was later renamed as ‘Anganwadi Services’.
In FY 2021-22, the GoI launched Poshan 2.0 as an umbrella programme that subsumed the existing anganwadi services scheme. Today, Poshan 2.0 is one of the world’s largest supplementary nutrition programmes, serving around 8.95 crore beneficiaries, through a network of 14.03 lakh AWCs.
Initially, any pregnant woman could enrol at her local AWC and receive THR during pregnancy, and for six months after childbirth. This changed in March 2023, when Aadhaar was made a mandatory requirement for access to THR. Further, since July 2025, facial recognition has also been made mandatory. Beneficiaries now must undergo verification through live photo-capturing and OTP authentication, followed by face-matching at the time of each THR collection. As a result, access to nutrition under the scheme is contingent not only on pregnancy but the ability to complete Aadhaar/ facial verification processes.
Restrictions in scheme design of PMMVY
The GoI launched PMMVY in 2017 to provide women with partial compensation, through conditional cash transfers, for wage losses during pregnancy. The assumption is that this will help her improve food choices, reduce physical labour and take adequate rest.
PMMVY is narrower in scope than Poshan 2.0. It covers women who fall within the age band of 18 years 7 months to 55 years, and is only available to the economically and socially marginalised. Maternity benefits are available for the first child and, for a second child, only if a girl. Beneficiaries must also satisfy procedural requirements, including registration of pregnancy, attendance at antenatal check-ups and compliance with child immunisation requirements. For second-child benefits, registration during pregnancy is mandatory.
Like Poshan 2.0 the application process has been digitised and linked to Aadhaar and facial verification. Since benefits are distributed through DBT mode, an Aadhaar-linked bank account is also mandatory. However, women are allowed to self-enrol.
Access to PMMVY is thus contingent on fulfilment of the eligibility criteria and the digital verification. In recent years, enrolment has declined: it fell from 62 lakh women in FY 2022-23 to 51 lakh in FY 2024-25 and 23 lakh in FY 25-26 (until October).
Common challenges in accessing schemes
Previously, the Supreme Court held that Aadhaar cannot be mandatory for legal entitlements like elementary education. Considering that pregnant women and lactating mothers are entitled to nutritional support and maternity benefits as a matter of statutory right under NFSA, mandating Aadhaar and facial verification raises legal concerns. This has also had grave implications for access to schemes, especially Poshan 2.0 which was intended to be universal. The following is the response, recorded during field visits, of a 16 year old girl who works as an anganwadi worker (‘AWW’) in Madhya Pradesh:
“This scheme is open to all eligible beneficiaries; indeed, it is designed for everyone…The only distinction is that those who are well-informed are better able to avail themselves of its benefits, as they possess the necessary documentation and a comprehensive understanding of the entire process. Conversely, those who lack this awareness are often unable to… and, consequently, remain deprived...”
Field insights from gram panchayats across Madhya Pradesh and Bihar illustrate the specific challenges these changes have created for beneficiaries seeking nutritional support. Some of these challenges are:
1. Aadhaar-linked enrolment requirements reinforce women’s dependence on husbands: The requirement of Aadhaar creates a barrier, especially for newly married women and those who have moved villages after marriage.
This occurs because the enrolment process assumes women can independently obtain, update and manage their Aadhaar documentation. In practice, documentation is shaped by gendered patterns of dependence.
Before marriage, a woman’s Aadhaar is linked to her father. Following marriage/ relocation, records need to be updated to reflect her husband’s contact information. Many women reported being unfamiliar with the updating process, unable to independently travel to block offices, or lacking confidence in navigating bureaucratic systems alone. As a result, enrolment in nutritional schemes frequently becomes contingent on male assistance.
2. Documentation requirements disproportionately burden marginalised women: Women from socially and economically marginalised households face greater difficulty completing enrolment procedures. Lower levels of education make registration requirements difficult to understand, while repeated visits to government offices impose substantial costs on households dependent on daily wage labour. The financial burden of obtaining or correcting documentation can also be difficult to absorb, particularly where unofficial payments are demanded. A 22 year old pregnant woman from Bihar explained as follows during the field visit:
“The government needs to consider how a poor person is supposed to obtain all these documents. Getting just a single document costs anywhere between one and two thousand rupees. We are poor people; we toil as daily wage laborers all day long just to earn enough for a single meal, and even then, we only manage to make 250 rupees.”
3. Digital enrolment systems create new barriers to access: Digitisation is introduced into welfare delivery with the promise of increasing efficiency, transparency, and simplifying access. However, in practice it has created access barriers. Technical failures like application crashes, unstable servers, and delayed receipt of OTPs, slow down registration. These delays shift the administrative burden onto the ASHAs/ AWWs who then spend more time completing registration, and making additional visits to women’s homes to finalise enrolment. This increases their already stretched workload.
The introduction of facial authentication has led to frustration for both the frontline worker and the women. As one 42 year old woman, an anganwadi worker from Bihar, explained:
“This facial recognition process is so complex that, in some cases, the app only successfully recognizes a beneficiary's face after 20 to 30 attempts… This not only wastes our time but also causes frustration for the beneficiaries. Occasionally, beneficiaries even go so far as to state that they no longer wish to avail themselves of our services, complaining, “You call us to the center so many times and repeatedly take photos of our faces, only to tell us that the app isn't working right now.””
4. Frontline workers lack capacity to support digital enrolment: The effectiveness of nutrition schemes depends heavily on ASHAs and AWWs, who serve as the primary interface between beneficiaries and the state. However, as of March 2025, there were 2.13 lakh AWW vacancies, increasing pressure on workers already responsible for delivering services. At the same time, workers are expected to manage digital enrolment but receive only limited training. Training was often described as consisting of instructional videos rather than hands-on support.
Unequal access to technology also affects implementation. Many frontline workers report not owning smartphones capable of supporting registration applications and instead relying on devices belonging to husbands or sons to complete official work.
5. Scheme design limits autonomy in accessing benefits: All women beneficiaries reported enrolling in schemes with the assistance of local ASHAs/ AWWs, even though PMMVY permits self-registration. Self-registration could increase women’s autonomy in accessing benefits and reduce administrative burden on frontline workers. However, under existing scheme guidelines the honorarium paid to AWWs/ ASHAs is higher when they facilitate beneficiary registration directly, than when women complete registration independently. As a result, workers may have little incentive to encourage self-registration, even where women are capable of completing the process themselves.
Conclusion
Access to nutrition schemes depends not only on eligibility and legal backing, but also on whether women can realistically navigate enrolment processes and satisfy administrative requirements with the resources available to them. Documentation requirements, digital enrolment systems and dependence on intermediaries can delay/ prevent access to benefits, even when women are eligible for support.
Scheme guidelines must not assume access to technology, documentation, or digital literacy and must account for the lived realities of women beneficiaries. Unless entitlements are designed to be genuinely accessible in practice, constitutional commitments and statutory protections will remain formal promises rather than mechanisms capable of improving nutritional outcomes.
Acknowledgement: This article draws on field insights and primary observations collected by Swapna Ramtake and Uday Shankar Kumar during fieldwork. The authors are grateful for their contribution.
Identities of all anganwadi workers, women and beneficiaries have been anonymised to maintain due privacy.
