Five hundred and sixty-five child development centres have been set up in Sunsari, but over 60 per cent of them are defunct. Some are being used as cowsheds and others as agricultural stores.

Hemanta Kumar Singh, district education officer of Sunsari says out of the 565 only 195 are up and running. The rest have closed down, supposedly because the children do not show up.

But every year funding is still being set aside for the centres and each one has a salaried admin officer who fills in forms in the name of the children and collects sums from the development committee. The total annual wage bill amounts to Rs 322.1 million.

The allocated budget is also misused. District officials blame the absence of a monitoring body and try to pass on the responsibility to other bodies. The NGO funding support is not invested in child development either.