Polycrisis and Intensified Risks for Children: Analysing “Mission Vatsalya” Scheme in India

Recognizing the importance of “Nari Shakti” to provide ‘Women-Led Development for next 25 years', the Indian Finance Minister announced three important umbrella schemes to be implemented in mission mode, viz., Mission Poshan 2.0, Mission Shakti and Mission VATSALYA. Among the triad, Mission VATSALYA is a centrally sponsored scheme being implemented in India with a view of “Leave No Child Behind” to create an enabling environment for the children who are in need of care and protection, children in conflict with law and other vulnerable children. Against the backdrop of polycrisis, India delineates the rights and protections for children, within a comprehensive legal framework, ensuring that all children have equal access to the public provisioning of quality child protection services. We conduct the public expenditure and institutional review of Mission VATSALYA in Odisha across selected districts. Odisha has been fiscally prudent, adhering to the fiscal rules of maintaining a fiscal deficit-to-GSDP ratio of 3 percent, maintaining fiscal sustainability even in the post-pandemic years. However, aggregate fiscal sustainability is not sufficient to achieve child developmental outcomes. The district level inferences revealed that the volatility in the utilisation ratio of funds resulted in the suboptimal performance of the child care institutions. The analysis also revealed that there are deficiencies in implementation of child protection schemes in terms of infrastructure, personnel, and public provisioning of services in Odisha. However, the initiative to conduct periodic surveys to identify the vulnerable children – [categorising the districts into mining, conflict zones, disaster prone areas, and migration] and the digital infrastructure initiative for online portals for child protection are laudable. There are inter-district differentials in the identification of vulnerable children and their institutionalisation. These inferences has policy implications in terms of strengthening the non- institutional care component for the vulnerable children, along with enhanced quality of services and infrastructure in the existing child care institutions.