India's Tamil Nadu Nutrition Program : Lessons and Issues in Management and Capacity Development
The Tamil Nadu Nutrition Program (TINP) is one of very few around the world that has reduced malnutrition on a large scale, and over a long period. It did well because it coupled good strategies and strong commitment at the sectoral level with good...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/11/3541884/indias-tamil-nadu-nutrition-program-lessons-issues-management-capacity-development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13787 |
| Summary: | The Tamil Nadu Nutrition Program (TINP)
is one of very few around the world that has reduced
malnutrition on a large scale, and over a long period. It
did well because it coupled good strategies and strong
commitment at the sectoral level with good micro-design at
the field level. Success factors included intensive sector
analysis prior to the program's design, which helped
build political and financial commitment to nutrition, as
well as a sound technical basis for the program ; careful
choice of committed managers, at least during the first ten
years ; using paid village level workers, resulting in low
drop-outs and high motivation ; well designed recruitment
criteria, ensuring that field workers were competent and
acceptable to clients ; a carefully planned training and
supervision system, which was entirely field rather
institution based-a model worth testing in other countries ;
a focus on a small number of interventions, tightly targeted
on high risk clients, which made field workers' jobs
feasible ; an efficient management information system,
which provided rapid feedback to clients at the local level,
as well as program managers ; involving local communities
through information campaigns before the program began, and
using women's and children's groups to help with
implementation. But TINP was not an unqualified success, and
much can be learned from its weaknesses: the commitment and
integrity of program management declined substantially after
the first ten years, program performance might have suffered
less if local communities had been empowered to play a
greater role in worker supervision and quality control; the
health referral system never worked well, and more could
have been done to identify food insecure families, and
enroll them in existing food security programs; TINP's
support systems in nutrition communications, operational
research and program evaluation remained weak, because
capacity strengthening plans were not developed for them the
Bank failed to carry out analytical work on management and
capacity development issues, despite continuing capacity
constraints in the nutrition program. |
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