Meal scheme is still a day-dream for children

PUNE, NOV 12: Nearly 71,27,305 students from 62,310 schools in the State are beneficiaries of the mid-day meal scheme in the current academ...

PUNE, NOV 12: Nearly 71,27,305 students from 62,310 schools in the State are beneficiaries of the mid-day meal scheme in the current academic year. The only hitch is the raison d’etre of the much tomtommed scheme has yet to be achieved.

Which means that former prime minister Narasimha Rao’s dream of providing a nourishing meal to primary school children has cleverly been given the go-by. Instead three kg of rice packets are distributed by the month-end only if the students register an 80 per cent attendance.

“The State government is seriously considering the proposal of actually providing the school children with a daily meal as envisaged under the Union government’s scheme,” asserts Director of Education Raghavendra Patil.

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However the scheme has suffered a setback thanks to the indifference to set up kitchens at schools and the sheer lack of infrastructure to coordinate the project.

It was on August 15, 1995, that Rao had launched the countrywide programme of nutritional support to school children to boost the universalisation of primary education by increasing the enrolment, attendance and simultaneously to control the retention of school children in the primary level Classes I to V.

While the budgetary allocation for the scheme has been raised to Rs 35 crore this year, the State government has included aided private schools, apart from those run by the Zilla Parishad, from 1997-98. However the main objective of the ambitious scheme still remains unfulfilled. That it is a `tedious job’ remains the unanimous lament of various education officials.

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