Mid-Day Deal

Though almost half-a-century old — the scheme was former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Kamaraj’s brainwave to check drop-out rates — it actually took off under M G Ramachandran. The southern state’s success story inspired then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh to extend it to the entire country in 1995. And just as it threatened to turn into another good idea badly implemented, the Supreme Court passed a landmark order in a case filed by PUCL in 2001.

It said that the every state government must implement the scheme by providing every child in every government school with a prepared mid-day meal with a minimum 300-calorie content and 8-12 gm of protein for a minimum of 200 schooldays each year.

Though the Supreme Court order did prod some states into getting their pots and pans together to dish out insipid meals, by and large, the project failed to catch the imagination of the nation. Some states, like Andhra Pradesh, so took to the idea that they ensured it continued even over the vacations. In Uttar Pradesh, in contrast, a half-hearted pilot project in 13 districts was junked for want of ‘‘funds’’.

This, despite the Court’s appointment of commissioners and requests of updates from every state government.

‘‘It needs another push,’’ said Jean Dreze of Right to Food, which has been campaigning for the success of the scheme. ‘‘This time from the Centre, to the states that are lagging or have not even launched the scheme.’’

CESS POOL
THE prayer could have just been answered. On Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced in his Budget that the 2 per cent education cess would be used for mid-day meals too. A definite commitment is still awaited, and will clear many discrepancies. For instance:

With partial implementation of the scheme, just a third of the country’s 150 million children in the 5-14 age group get their mid-day meals.

There is wide disparity between states that are implementing the scheme and those that are not. If Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Kerala are held up as the Good Boys, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and even Uttaranchal are close behind. Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab have implemented the scheme partially. But the real worries are Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where it is yet to take off (see map).

The actual implementation is by no means easy, but experts like to make an example of Rajasthan. An early decision to implement the Supreme Court order and administrative will saw the BIMARU state subsequently faring well in food logistics and monitoring.

At the grassroots level, each school is supposed to have a cook to prepare the mid-day meal after obtaining grains from the sarpanch or teacher. Just as he is frequently missing, second helpings are often out of the question. In Rajasthan, the menu is the same day after day: Ghugri, a gruel made with boiled meat mixed with gur, oil and peanuts. In Chhattisgarh, it is rice, dal and some vegetables, Karnataka — the most nutrition-conscious — offers rice, sambar, vegetables, pongal rice and even sweets.

The scheme requires kitchen facilities. Only Karnataka has some pucca kitchens (31 per cent). The rest manage with tin sheds or in classrooms; others use verandahs. Some depend on utensils donated by the sarpanch or charitable families. In some states, children are asked to bring their own plates to eat off. In Rajasthan, students even use their pages torn out of notebooks as plates.

The cost of vegetables, spices, oil and salaries of cooks are paid by the state. The Centre makes a fixed contribution (Rs 50 per quintal, an amount that is never enough) to the cost of transporting grains from local FCI godowns to schools.

Since the state bears the heaviest burden, it is easy for them to plead paucity of funds. But consider this: It would cost the Uttar Pradesh government just Rs 300 crore per year to provide mid-day meals to all primary school children.

According to estimates, if all 150 million primary and secondary school children were provided a meal, as in the US, the additional cost would be Rs 9,000 core annually, 11 per cent of the national education outlay. But the flesh is weak when the spirit is unwilling.

So, Rajasthan spends only 50 paisa per child per day on recurring cost, compared with more than one rupee per child in Karnataka. And Karnataka allocates Rs 35,000 to each school on fixed costs, while Chhattisgarh provides Rs 800.

A FULL STOMACH
SO what are the benefits of this expenditure? Is it really just about a meal for the students? A survey by the Centre for Equity Studies in Delhi shows that the class I enrollments rose by 15 per cent within the year with the introduction of mid-day meals; the comparable figures for Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan were 17 and 25 per cent respectively.

Apart from eliminating classroom hunger, there are other positive spin-offs: Children learn to sit together and eat together overriding caste and gender biases. And some imaginative states are combining it with health benefits such as Vitamin A or iodine dosages and deworming exercises.

All of which can only go to address National Family Health Survey observations (1998-99) that 74 per cent of Indian children between 6 and15 years were anaemic, affecting their mental as well as physical growth. Nearly 50 per cent of children under three were underweight.

STUDENTS’ DIGEST?
BUT, according to Dreze, ramshackle mid-day meal programmes ‘‘can do more harm than good’’. For example, in Bamhu in Bilkaspur, Chhattisgarh, the mid-day meals are prepared in a sooty classroom on a makeshift stove, next to swarming pupils. The cook struggles with inadequate utensils and co-opts students for cutting vegetables and cleaning rice. According to the teacher, no classes are held after lunch as the classroom becomes filthy.

In Rajasthan, the ghugri is reportedly often undercooked, posing a serious health hazard for the children. Elsewhere, teachers themselves have to do the cooking in the absence of a cook.

There are also peculiar coordination problems among various government departments. One school in Karnataka reported irregular rice deliveries because of tensions between teachers and local civil suppliers.

Then there are social prejudices. In Rajasthan, the Right to Food survey team came across Dalit children who were asked to drink with their cupped hands while the others used common glasses. But this was not a norm and the team found that caste barriers did melt over time.

Cooks often complain of long overdue salaries. In Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the cooks’ responsibilities are not clearly defined and they end up serving food, collecting fuel and cleaning the utensils. Karnataka is the only state where these issues are well resolved.

Few as they may be, such examples indicate that the scheme is the only way ahead. A little imagination — as in Chhattisgarh, which have co-opted NGOs and women’s cooperatives into the effort — and a lot of political will, as Dreze says, can make the programme work.Food for thought, all right.

The hungry four

UP, Bihar, West Bengal, the three worst-off states, don’t have even a rough guide in place

ONCE the Centre-sponsored mid-day meal scheme gets going this year, four states will receive the maximum attention. Of them three don’t even have a rough plan on the drawing board.

‘‘We have to start from scratch in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal,’’ a senior official of the HRD Ministry says. The fourth state where not much progress has been made is Maharashtra. But the ministry is confident that Maharashtra has enough administrative experience to overcome this shortcoming.

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal present three sets of problems. For example, the ministry is looking to active participation by NGOs. And though Uttar Pradesh has several voluntary organisations working in the education sector, quite a few of them have been suspected of financial bungling.

Another stumbling block is experience. A performing education NGO need not necessarily be equipped to handle a cooked meal distribution scheme.

In West Bengal, the ministry will have to close its eyes and opt for the distribution network suggested by the ruling Left Front. The CPI(M)-led alliance prefers to work through the grassroots panchayati raj system instead of the NGO network. Ministry sources apprehend complaints of partisan politics over cooked meal distribution later. Even quality control will be suspect. But then NGOs that do well in the state have often survived by being co-opted by the Left.

Bihar presents the real problem. It neither has a panchayati institution in place, nor is it blessed with really good, incorruptible NGOs. The implementation of the mid-day meal scheme in the province will depend on the rural network that the district magistrate or the collector has been able to build.

Nevertheless, the ministry has almost Rs 4,200 crore with it (proportion of education cess money included) for the mid-day meal scheme. Except for these three to four states, the infrastructure in most other states are in place. And Shastri Bhavan officials are confident of utilising a major part of the allocated funds in the current fiscal.

DIPTOSH MAJUMDAR

TAMIL NADU
The appetiser

CLUTCHING his aluminium plate, 10-year-old Prabhakaran lunges ahead as the bell rings in his panchayat union school at Athipattu Pudur village near Chennai. At 1.30 pm, the class V student gets his first morsel of the day: Rice, sambar, plus a boiled egg.

‘‘My thaatha (grandfather) cannot afford to give me breakfast and will only get some dinner for me,” he says.

But for the state government-sponsored Puratchi Thalaivar MGR Nutritious Meal Programme, Prabhakaran would have probably gone without food — and schooling. Most of the 120 children in his school partake of the mid-day meals. And on the day of the week when egg is served, attendance is 100 per cent, says principal R Kanchana.

To the hungry children, it does not matter that their food is cooked in a school verandah (the kitchen is in a shambles) that doubles up as a community loo by night. ‘‘The villagers come and defecate in the verandah at night and every morning I have to clean up before cooking there,’’ rues the noon meal ayah (cook), Kuppulakshmi.

Not ideal conditions certainly, and conditions that many of the 83,658 mid-day meal centres for pre-schoolers and school children in Tamil Nadu will identify with. But they ensure that 72.52 lakh children get at least one meal a day and, perhaps more importantly, don’t drop out of school.

As a result, in Tamil Nadu, elementary education enrolment has improved drastically to 140 students per school and drop-out rates fell to 14.31 per cent, claims a state planning commission official.

Though almost half-a-century old on paper, the scheme climbed the popularity charts in 1982, when former Chief Minister M G Ramachandran set up mid-day meal centres. School children now get 100-120 gm of rice, 15 gm of dal and 50 gm of vegetables everyday, adding up to 450 Kcal daily. The state government spends about Rs 464.57 crore annually to feed the 72 lakh children.

Of course, there are any number of complaints about the conditions of the centres, the quality of food provided and theft of food stocks. To that end, the government has roped in NGOs and self-help groups to monitor and run the centres. Panchayats, too, have powers to keep tabs on them.

Still, there are concerns: 44 per cent of the children in the state are malnourished, 10.6 per cent are underweight and 36.7 per cent are stunted.

RADHA VENKATESAN

CHHATTISGARH
Chew on this

TAMIL Nadu may have been the first off the block in implementing the mid-day meal scheme, but the honour of continuing it during holidays goes to Bastar, Chhattisgarh.

The summer scheme has been a major success, with upto 80 per cent of the 226 students of two primary schools at Ransargipal — 27 km from district HQ Jagdalpur — turning up for their one assured meal of the day. The difference, claim officials, was made by involving women’s self-help groups.

‘‘Women’s involvement will impact school attendance and student health in a major way over the next few months,’’ says Bastar District Collector Dinesh Srivastava. ‘‘After all, who knows how to feed children better than a mother?’’

If truth be told, improvement is necessary in almost every corner of this backward, barely literate, Naxal-infested district. Almost every one of the 2,595 primary schools (with 1.15 lakh students) reports poverty, malnutrition and high drop-out rates. Women’s groups are involved in just 1,500 of these schools.

The encouraging response to the summer scheme, though, has prompted the government to make mid-may meals a through-the-year feature in all 16 of Chhattisgarh’s districts. ‘‘Overall, there is 10 per cent increase in school enrollments in the past two years,’’ says Babu Lal Aggarwal, secretary, school education. ‘‘A survey showed that if 3.61 lakh children in the 6-14 age group were not attending school previously, last year, the figure had come down to 1.13 lakh. The mid-day meals are certainly a pull.’’

ASHWANI SHARMA

RAJASTHAN
Cooking up a storm

THE Home Science department in Rajasthan University is experimenting with wheat. Their brief: lip-smacking dishes that are ‘‘easy-to-cook and affordable’’. The reason: The initial flush of success with mid-day meals is over. Now, the children complain about the ‘‘monotonous’’ food.

It’s a valid charge, agrees R K Bhardwaj, executive engineer in the Panchayati Raj department who has been working with the mid-day meal scheme since day one. But monotonous or not, it is responsible for keeping 5,62,005 more students in school in 2004, as compared to 2001. And it’s responsible for the return of 7,00,000 students to class when 70,000-plus primary schools reopened on July 1.

But the ghugri — the mainstay of the mid-day meals — is running out of time. In Sirsi village, teacher Meera Arun says, ‘‘On the surface it all looks so good. But most of the children just don’t want to eat the meal; we literally have to force it down their throats.” According to principal Shobha Parikh, the number of students in their school has not changed much. ‘‘On an average, we have 200 students every session, and most of them are from economically poor households. But that doesn’t mean they come here just to eat,’’ she says.

Rajasthan was one of the first states to implement the Supreme Court directive in 2001. Starting with 16 districts, they expanded the school to cover all government and aided schools by July 2002.

Says Bhardwaj, ‘‘We decided to do it right and made sure that despite the resource crunch and initial resistance from teachers, the children got their daily meals.’’

Besides enforcement, the state government constituted a committee to oversee the distribution. This ensured that the school kitchen did not shut down on any working day.

The only complaint is the lack of variety in the food. ‘‘The cost hampers things,’’ says Bhardwaj.

ANURADHA NAGARAJ

MAHARASHTRA
Cooked, uncooked we like it

IN the one-room primary school at Katkaripada, Khodala, academic refuge to more than 100 tribal kids, the ritual of the mid-day meal is more significant than the morning national anthem.

Since school opened on June 14, though, there has been no meal here. The teachers say there are no foodgrains in the fair price shops now. ‘‘School has just reopened. Hence the delay. By next week, we should get the grains,’’ says Nana Thombre, president of the local primary schools .

For now, 10-year-old Sunita Parekar and her two younger siblings will have to do with books. Ask her whether she likes the meal, and she answers slightly incredulously, ‘‘Yes, we need it.’’

It’s two years since Sunita and others in her taluka — as students of 80 per cent of the total 64,000 government primary schools — became the beneficiaries of the cooked mid-day meal.

Like her, they voice no complains about the ‘quality’ of the meal. It’s the same khichdi they get every afternoon, often without adequate spice or oil, ingredients provided by the contractor — in this case, an elderly village woman. With a budget of just 50 paisa per child, the government dishes out just the rice.

Their families, though, would prefer the earlier scheme of providing dry rations: 3 kilos/month for a child. After all, it made a better equation for a family meal (and the state government agrees)

However, no one can deny the incentive that the meal provides. Chitra Borse, the anganwadi in-charge in this area, says, ‘‘All my anganwadi kids are in this primary school, no one has dropped off.’’

KETAKI GHOGE

UTTAR PRADESH
What lunch break?

‘‘THERE’S no lunch break in my school,’’ announces Rajkumari, headmistress of a primary school in Ghazipur, Lucknow. ‘‘Few students bring anything to eat from home, and there is no provision to serve them anything at school. Till April, they used to get three kg wheat from the government, but that has been discontinued.’’

Rajkumari had no idea about the Supreme Court’s orders. ‘‘If that is the case, drop-out rates will definitely come down — right now, it’s between 35-40 per cent,’’ she says.

A few km away at Bajaria in Nishatgunj, primary school headmaster Shambhu Dayal Yadav says they have just got orders to ensure wheat distribution among the kids. ‘‘They are supposed to pick it up from a fair price shop. But it goes to feed the whole family while the effort should be to ensure the school-going children eat properly,’’ he points out.

To that end, says an official in the Education department, the government will be serving cooked food in two blocks each of six districts: 18 schools in a state with more than 88,000, and 5,000 students from among 2.17 crore.

Interestingly, Uttar Pradesh is the only state with a pressure group working to ensure implementation of the Supreme Court directive. ‘‘We can have some relief but still there is a long way to go before the government decision is turned into reality,’’ says Adiyog, convener of the Mid Day Meal Campaign.

The government, on its part, has claimed in an affidavit before the Supreme Court that total implementation of the mid-day meal scheme would entail an expenditure of Rs 640 crore annually, an amount it cannot afford.

AMIT SHARMA

BIHAR
A bad taste

THREE years were all it took for a grand scheme to fall apart. Set up a decade ago, the 79 charvaha schools were to provide cooked mid-day meals and education for young cowherds. ‘‘The mid-day stopped first, and then the children began to drop out,’’ remembers Devinder Ram, a student of the first batch of the first charvaha school in Muzaffarnagar.

On paper, though, the non-cooked mid-day meal scheme continues. ‘‘We give three kg of grain per student per month,’’ says Ram Chandra Purve, Minister for Primary Education.

But as with most other schemes in this state, this too evaporates on the way. None of the eight schools that The Sunday Express surveyed in West Champaran district served mid-day meals, cooked or otherwise. And none, incidentally, had teachers attending school either.

No wonder then, West Champaran has the highest drop-out rate in Bihar: 74 per cent. Overall, 43 per cent drop out in the primary stages and not more than 40 per cent of all enrolled matriculate.

Purve claims, though, that things are improving. A pilot project to provide cooked midday meals is operational in 30 of the state’s least literate blocks. ‘‘By the next academic year we will expand the scheme to 10 least literate districts of the state. However, to cover the entire state we need Central assistance,’’ he says.

VARGHESE K GEORGE

JHARKHAND
Mouthful in a name

JHARKHAND’S mid-day meal may not feed too many, but the name itself is a mouthful: Saraswati Vahini Madhyan Bhojan Karyakarm. The state government claims to have spent more than Rs 15 crore under the programme in 2002-03. For 2004-05, the state HRD department has Rs 77.44 crore in its kitty for the Karyakarm.
But at the Koenjhari Primary School, not one of the 39 BPL or backward caste students has ever got anything by way of a mid-day meal. There are 1,686 primary schools in Jharkhand, and 5,977 state-run secondary schools, and the story repeats itself in almost all of them. Why?

A senior police official says, ‘‘The money has been plundered.” HRD secretary Ashok Kumar differs: ‘‘A pilot programme was implemented in 200 schools last year. Then there was a problem… The state Food Corporation was not able to make the rice available. The FCI had no (railway) rakes.’’

MANOJ PRASAD