If there is just one measure that the Manmohan Singh government can claim success in having implemented, it would have wrested for itself a mention in the annals of good governance. It’s a measure that would impact simultaneously on the present and the future; that would help address the seemingly insurmountable gaps in ensuring a universal primary education regime; that would contribute towards correcting serious discrimination along caste and gender lines; that would shore up physical and mental well-being at a national level. It’s a measure, not complex in concept, but one that requires political and administrative will and Centre-state synergy. What is that one measure? Without doubt, it is the extension of the mid-day meal programme for school children in every corner of India.There are indications that Finance Minister P. Chidambaram plans to factor in precisely such an intervention in the forthcoming budget, as he had through a modest provision in his “dream budget” of 1997. In any case, he may have little choice. Two months ago, the Supreme Court, as part of its hearings to review the state of school meals in the country, expressed its “anguish” that its repeated orders calling for the provision of cooked mid-day meals in all primary schools were not being heeded. It has now directed all states to universalise mid-day meals in primary schools no later than September 2004. Comprehensive reports are to be submitted in early September by the chief secretary of every state government, who will be held responsible for any default in the implementation of the directive. The apex court also thought it fit to reprimand the Union government for doing little to actualise Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Independence Day 2003 promise about extending cooked mid-day meals up to Class 10 as part of the national programme.It has now been 22 years since the idea of a mid-day meal for school children was first introduced. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran began the ‘noon meal scheme’, catering to rural children in the age group of 2-9. The man had an instinct for the popular gesture. Fortunately, there was also the administrative will to sustain it. By 1984, the programme had been extended to cover children aged 2-15 in both urban and rural Tamil Nadu. Within ten years the developmental spin-offs of what may perhaps have been conceived as a “populist” intervention, became plainly evident. Between the mid-’70s and the mid-’90s, school enrolments in the state’s primary schools rose sharply. Enrolment in middle school levels over these two decades grew by nearly 161 per cent. Retention levels shot up and, interestingly, the significant gender gap in school enrolment also narrowed. If Tamil Nadu’s literacy and school enrolment levels today are next only to Kerala’s, those humble meals, nourishing an entire generation — over 6 million children are estimated to have benefited from them — certainly played a stellar role.To this day, the state continues to take these mid-day meals very seriously. Among the rollbacks that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa instituted after her recent electoral drubbing, was the reintroduction of the provision of an egg a week in the state’s mid-day meal scheme. Clearly the vegetarian substitutes, like dal and potatoes, which she had ordered earlier, were not popular. Today, the government spends an estimated Rs 660 crore for a programme that covers 65 lakh school children and 17 lakh others.The mid-day meal, has, over the years become a fashionable mantra. But efforts to translate the idea on a pan-Indian scale have met with mixed results. In 1995, the Narasimha Rao government launched one programme with some fanfare: primary school children were to get pre-cooked/ready-to-eat foods or foodgrains for 10 months a year. The flaw in this conception was that food grain was allowed as a substitute for cooked meals, which meant that there was large-scale siphoning off of dry provisions. Since the young beneficiaries of the programme were in no position to defend their entitlements, or its quantity and quality, there were widespread failures.Coupled with this was a complete lack of administrative will. In the Supreme Court hearings, some state governments expressed the view that they just could not afford such a programme given the state of their finances. The apex court was brief in its response to these excuses: Cut the flab, was the message conveyed. And the flab can indeed be cut, as Karnataka showed. The S.M. Krishna government managed to bring its wage and pension bill as well as interest payments down to 57.40 per cent of state revenues and sustained an enviable mid-day meal programme. Contrast this to Bihar — a state which needs the benefit of such a programme more than almost every other — has government salaries and pensions accounting for 90.05 per cent of total expenditure. In fact, a viable mid-day meal programme could well emerge as evidence, not just of a state’s social welfare instincts, but the soundness of its financial management.The Centre, of course, has an important role to play in facilitating this. In 2002, the Abhijit Sen Committee Report on long-term foodgrains policy, worked out a formula, suggesting “Central support to states to the extent of 50 per cent for moving to a cooked mid-day meal scheme for all school-going children.” The Supreme Court has endorsed this approach in its recent directive. It has also added, in a related directive, that mid-day meals should be made available during holidays in drought-affected areas and that Dalit cooks should as far as possible be employed to prepare the meals. The approach then seems to be a holistic assault on social injustice, ranging from lack of access to adequate schooling and nutrition to caste and gender disparities.There must be no further delay in actualising this valuable state intervention. Developmental economist Jean Dreze, whose work in partnership with Amartya Sen has won international acclaim, has been indefatigable in his advocacy of mid-day meals. In fact, he has personally monitored numerous schemes in various locations in the country and is convinced that “better fed and better-educated children are the key to the future health of the nation”. And the midday meal, in turn, is the key to ensuring this.
