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Journalism of Courage
If I told you that all it will take to empower all of India8217;s destitute, dispossessed children is Rs 6,000 crores 0.2 of GDP a year would you believe me? No, you would not. You would point out correctly that the Government of India spends more than Rs 40,000 crores a year on anti-poverty schemes and thousands of children continue to die of starvation in Maharashtra, one of our richest States. You would point out correctly that thousands of crore rupees have been spent over the years on child welfare and development schemes and you only have to drive through the streets of one of our metropolises to see half-starved babies in the arms of mothers themselves only children begging at traffic lights. It is shaming evidence of the failure of government but our political leaders and high officials drive by in cars with windows of darkened glass. In any case they choose not to see.
Or they would have seen a long time ago that the simplest way to empower children is to provide them with nutrition and education and the best way, as MGR proved in Tamil Nadu, is through an effective, nutritious midday meal scheme. M G Ramachandran remains a hero in Tamil Nadu because he took the simplest idea and made it into an instrument of empowerment. Alas, not all chief ministers can be MGR and his idea has not worked so well in other States. But, last week, when I visited the kitchens of an NGO called Akshay Patra in Bangalore I realised that MGR8217;s idea is still the best one around if it can be implemented outside government by NGOs. Akshay Patra has proved that at a cost of Rs 5 a meal for unlimited, nutritious food we can feed the 10 crore Indian children who live below the poverty line.
Akshay Patra, which has support from Infosys, has taken MGR8217;s idea and made it into something that could transform India in the next ten years if we could implement it nationwide. Started five years ago on a small scale it now feeds 1,19,000 children a day in Bangalore alone from a kitchen that cooks with steam and uses technology to make vast quantities of sambhar and rice in time to be transported in special containers to schools by lunch time. In Mathura and Jaipur the menu has been altered to cater to local tastes and technology used to make chapatis on a carousel. In Rajasthan8217;s Baran district, instead of fancy machines it is village women who do the cooking under the supervision of an NGO. Akshay Patra is able to replicate and modify the scheme to suit local needs but to run it, what is essential is a reliable NGO.
Government involvement is the kiss of death. I say this after examining the rice supplied to Akshay Patra by the Food Corporation of India. On an average a 50-kg bag of FCI rice contains 3 kgs of junk that includes not just pebbles and mud but rusted nails and needles. The rice is cleaned for hours before it becomes usable. This is, sadly, the way official agencies work in our fair and wondrous land.
Government involvement also entails the setting up of a vast bureaucracy, in itself the kiss of death. But, what could make a national movement out of Akshay Patra is if every MP and MLA signed on to implement it at their level by using some of their disproportionately large constituency funds. These are meant for development purposes and what could be more important in the scheme of India8217;s development than that no Indian child go to bed hungry at night and no Indian child remain illiterate. As someone who travels much in the depths of mofussil India I have learned to have only contempt for 8216;8216;poverty alleviation8217;8217; schemes. Run by government they do not work, they cannot work because the delivery system is a sieve through which money passes mostly into the pockets of corrupt officials. Equally, words fail me in trying to describe the scale of Akshay Patra8217;s achievement. It has to be seen to be believed.
Write to tavleensinghexpressindia.com
