A new click into the beneficiary module: Citizen access to Poshan Tracker

As India marks the 7th Poshan Pakhwada this April, a key focus is to raise awareness about the newly launched Beneficiary Module of the Poshan Tracker. This milestone ushers in a new phase of community empowerment, placing actionable nutrition data directly in the hands of citizens.

Launched under the national nutrition policy framework, aka Poshan 2.0 guidelines, this new feature addresses a long-recognised challenge: weak community ownership of Anganwadi activities, which has often limited the effectiveness of nutrition interventions nationwide. The Poshan Tracker, a mobile-based application already used by every Anganwadi worker to provide real-time data on the delivery of nutrition and childcare services, now extends its reach to the very people it aims to serve.

For the first time, citizens eligible for accessing Anganwadi services across the network of 1.3 million Anganwadi centres can self-register by logging into the app Poshan Tracker - apps on Google Play or the website Poshan Tracker to track their service data, including growth monitoring, take-home rations, and hot cooked meals. This leap from a government-facing monitoring tool to a citizen-facing platform reflects a larger shift toward demand-driven, data-informed nutrition governance.

This specialised module enables you to locate the Anganwadi centre closest to your location and facilitates self-registration for pregnant or lactating women, children up to age 6, and adolescent girls. Women beneficiaries can access this module to monitor their service history, including pregnancy trimesters and anaemia status, record weight gain during pregnancy, and track the receipt of take-home rations (THR) and hot-cooked meals (HCM).

Parents and caregivers can also use the app to monitor their child’s height and weight actively, check if they are meeting growth mil estones, and verify eligibility for THR and HCM. One of the most groundbreaking features is that it empowers the beneficiaries to seek redressal for grievances related to inadequate receipt of Anganwadi services. For instance, a lactating mother, her husband, or any family member can now report issues such as not receiving

THR or problems with their local Anganwadi centre, such as irregular openings or lack of infrastructure.

The Beneficiary Module of the Poshan Tracker establishes a direct connection with the beneficiaries it serves. Therefore, it opens up several promising pathways for transforming the Poshan Tracker into a benchmark for interactive, citizen-centric, digitised public health and nutrition systems. The module should consider four promising future directions.

Foremost, leveraging India’s extensive smartphone usage, the module could introduce features such as scheduling appointments at the nearest Anganwadi centre or arranging home visits by Anganwadi workers.

Second, by sending push notifications to beneficiaries on upcoming community-based events, the Beneficiary Module could serve as a platform for citizen engagement with health and nutrition services. This could increase beneficiary participation in community activities like Vazan Diwas, where all children in a village are weighed monthly, the celebration of nutrition events like Annaprashan, which marks the introduction of solid foods to young children and providing information on the venues and dates for Village Health Sanitation Nutrition Days.

Third, creating an in-built feedback system within Poshan Tracker would allow beneficiaries to evaluate the quality of Anganwadi services received, including those on growth monitoring, delivery of food rations, home visits and referral to health services for children suffering from acute malnutrition. This enhancement could transform the Poshan Tracker into a platform that can allow for a social audit of service delivery, effectively addressing the needs and demands of the target beneficiaries.

Finally, exploring the integration of the Beneficiary interface with data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Reproductive and Child Health Services, Vaccination Status, and Health services can enable all eligible mothers and children to track their health and nutrition status comprehensively at one platform.

The introduction of the Beneficiary Module in the Poshan Tracker thus marks a significant advancement in India’s use of technology to enhance the delivery of Poshan and Anganwadi services. This module simplifies registration and service access for millions of beneficiaries. It institutionalises a mechanism for citizen-led accountability of Anganwadi services, much in line with GOI’s mandate for promoting “Jan Bhagidari” or Community Ownership of government programs. By incorporating features like appointment scheduling and real-time service tracking, the Poshan Tracker is poised to bridge the significant gap between policy intent and on-the-ground execution.

Moreover, by integrating feedback systems and other data platforms, this tool enhances the responsiveness of Anganwadi services to communities’ real needs, paving the way for a robust, transparent, and participatory nutrition and health ecosystem. The challenge now lies in ensuring these digital advances translate into tangible improvements in the health and nutrition outcomes of India’s most vulnerable populations. Poshan Tracker’s innovative approach could serve as a model for other nations striving to meet their public health goals through technology and community engagement.

Professor Lindsay Jaacks
Professor of Global Health & Nutrition at the University of Edinburgh
Dr. Ananya awasthi
Director of Anuvaad, an accelerator for science translation on health and nutrition