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HARYANA Little Yogesh, a resident of the nearby slums, doesn't miss any of his classes at the Government Primary School, Sector 4, Panchkula. He's among some of the most regular students in class. His incentive: Haryana Government's nutritious mid-day meal. Says Suman, the school head: " The mid-day meal scheme has proved to be a boon as far as getting children to school is concerned. It's a big temptation for them. While the number of students was large at the beginning of every session, by the end it used to fall significantly. This high drop-out rate has also been checked," she says. It's the same story elsewhere, too, in Haryana where children and parents seem to have taken the mid-day meal bait to send their wards to school; the education scenario has seen a change for the better in the state. A labourer who is barely able to make enough to provide for his family of eight members, Sham Lal, says: “Earlier, I thought attending school was a waste of time. My eldest daughter who is 10 would go and wash utensils at people’s home while her brother and sister went to school. Now, all three go to school and I have the satisfaction that they have had a stomach-full in the afternoon.” So big is the attraction for having the “one good meal” a day that students away for their Class V board examinations at other centres return to school to have their food. After taking her examination, Heena Sharma, Class V student at the school in Ramgarh, rushes to her school lest the prepared meal finishes. “I really look forward to the day when we get bakhli, a broth prepared from wheat grain and channa. It is the favourite of our class and we don’t miss it for anything. Our teachers take us to the examination centres every morning and all the students come back to school together to have their meal,” she sums up for her classmates. This sentiment finds an echo in the schools at Madanpura, Jaisinghpura, Kishangarh and in Sector 25 of Panchkula as also elsewhere in the district. “We have the menu laid down for the entire week. While we have specific days for making sweet dalia, Kichdi, bakhli, pulao and sweet rice, we have a free hand on Saturday and can make anything from among these items,” explains school in charge Darshan Mittal. At present, the cooked mid-day meal is available to as many as 14.94 lakh children across the state. Though serving of cooked meals in August, 2004, began amid protests by the teaching fraternity forced to cook meals, over time the baton of cooking the meal has passed on to local women specially employed by the schools for the purpose. Initially, the Education Department was plagued with complaints of rotten food items supplied through the central agency. To circumvent this problem, there’s now a procurement committee headed by the additional deputy commissioner at each of the district headquarters. While rice and wheat are provided by the Central Government free of cost, this committee has been empowered to purchase the remaining items to ensure quality. The Additional Director, Elementary Education, Haryana, Roop Singh, who holds the responsibility of the mid-day meal scheme also, remarks: “We have had no complaints about the quality of food served under the scheme in the recent past. Schools are given their ration according to the student-strength they have to feed and the entire procurement is happening at the district level. We are only overseeing the entire project which is running to our satisfaction.” The problem of erratic supplies, however, continues to dog the scheme. One common problem being faced by the schools is that the raw material is “deposited” at a centre identified for the purpose and that caters to a cluster of five or six schools. This material is provided at different times of the month. “The department should work out a scheme where the entire raw material is made available to the school in one go. Since that is not the case, studies suffer because teachers are forced make the rounds of the centre to get their supplies,” an in charge explains. Another drawback is that the schools are forced to make their own space for cooking the meals. “How we cook depends a lot on the weather. If it is bright and sunny, we cook in the open, otherwise we are forced to share the space in the corridors with students. The classrooms don’t seem enough for children. So we can’t even convert one into a kitchen,” maintains Sudesh of Kishangarh village.
HIMACHAL PRADESH With enrolment already touching 99 per cent and no visible signs of “hunger” in the state, the mid-day meal scheme does not hold much attraction either for the education authorities or the children. The hill state has its share of poverty but the people are not so poor as would make them send their children to school for meals. It is, thus, hardly surprising that the scheme is considered as an unwarranted burden by the education department ,particularly the teachers, who have to ensure that hot-cooked meals are served to students every day. In fact the state never felt the need for such a scheme and it would not have been introduced at all but for the Supreme Court order. Nevertheless, the programme launched three years ago is being implemented reasonably well, notwithstanding the lack of requisite infrastructure. A variety of cooked food is being served in all the schools on a daily basis in 10,991 government and government-aided primary schools with a total enrolment of 5.30 lakh. The 2,300- odd private schools have not been covered under the programme. The difficult topography and scattered locations of the institutions made it implicit for the scheme to be implemented in a highly decentralised manner with meals cooked at the school level. Until August last only “pulao” and “khichri” were being served which the children found monotonous. The government subsequently allowed the school managements to decide the menu keeping the local preferences in view and make the meals more wholesome, varied and nutritious. It also stipulated that the menu has to be changed every day and sweet rice served at least once a week. Besides fruit and eggs be made part of the diet. It also revised the scales of ingredients, cooking costs and rates of honorarium for the workers engaged under the scheme for the purpose. A review meeting convened by the union secretary for human resource development early this month found the quality of the school meal programme in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh was better than in other northern states. But problems like lack of infrastructure and shortage of manpower does create problems. As many as 10,534 schools are without kitchen sheds. Meals are cooked either in proper classrooms, veran dahs or in the open in absence of kitchen sheds. The schools have been provided cooking gas but they do not have proper tables for keeping it. In most of the schools cooking is being done on gas stoves using bricks. There is also no proper place for storage of foodgrains and other ingredients. While the schools mostly have adequate utensils for cooking, the children have to carry their own plates to school every day. The biggest criticism comes from teachers who feel that their main duty of teaching the students was being affected. More than one-third of the total school had just two teachers, one of which was preoccupied with mid-day meals scheme. They are finding the maintenance of accounts and stock register, making purchases and other related duties too cumbersome. The staff at block, district and state headquarters is also not happy with the additional duties assigned to them relating to the implementation of the scheme. In some of the states a separate department headed by an officer of the rank of commissioner had been created for purpose but in Himachal even additional hands had not been provided to share the burden. As a result the department is finding it difficult to properly monitor the scheme. A recent survey conducted by Himachal Pradesh University revealed that the school managements at times found it difficult to meet the expenses of vegetables and fruit but the children were happy with the quality and quantity of meals. They no longer brought their own tiffin. The schools get Rs 2.50 per child per day but it was not enough. The state has authorised the school management to committees to make purchases of ingredients such as pulses , vegetables ,fuels, spices and oil for which funds were provided through the block elementary education officers. The schools were supposed to display the menu approved by the local committee but most of them were lax in
this regard.
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