The MDWS directed the state governments to come out with exclusive IEC/SBCC plans for the year 2018-19, which was the first such initiative. All the states were expected to implement their own IEC/SBCC plans during the year 2018-19. However, the existing Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) is not designed to have insight into the processes of planning and have limited information on implementation of IEC activities. Therefore, there was a felt need for knowing how the plans were prepared and how those were being implemented in the states. In the context of the above, MDWS requested UNICEF India Country Office (ICO) to study the status ofpreparation and implementation of IEC/SBCC plans of different states for the year 2018-19. UNICEF ICO agreed to support such assessment in five states namely, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and West Bengal. They partnered with SIGMA Foundation, a ‘Not for Profit’ organization to take up the study.

The approach adopted for the study involved analysis of the state and district IEC/SBCC plans for the year 2018-19 to review the plans and to assess various aspects of the processes of planning followed and implementation through field studies. Information was collected from different key officials through IDIs and various sections of the community through FGDs. The districts were selected in consultation with the state governments and UNICEF state office keeping in mind the diversity within the state. For Assam and West Bengal, the only two states which were yet to be declared as ODF out of the selected five states, one ODF and one non-ODF district were selected. Further, one block was selected in each district at random. Further two GPs of each block were selected at random for assessing the ground reality.

The report was shared with UNICEF ICO. It was found that all the five states prepared their Annual Plans for the year 2018-19 and the districts selected for the study also had their plans. All the plans were stated to have been prepared in a bottom-up approach. In practice, the preparation of the plans was more centralized and the process of consultation was weak. There was more thrust on awareness generation activities through mass media. IPC based activities did not have so much priorities as it should have received. Partnership with various government department/agencies and professional agencies were there. There was also convergence with related programmes. UNICEF was an important partner in all states. Dedicated human resources for IEC/SBCC was available at the state level. However, in 4 out of 10 districts the post of IEC consultants was laying vacant.