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As per the National Programme for Nutritional Support to Primary Education guidelines, the foodgrain has to be taken directly from the FCI godown to the school or village concerned. Here the trucks were caught carrying it from FCI godowns in Bulandshahr, UP, to Delhi on the pretext of getting it cleaned. The report said that 2,760 sacks of rice seized could just be the tip of the iceberg as the NGO concerned was not just supplying rice to primary schools in Delhi but also to neighbouring Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
“But that was involving a UP-based NGO. Delhi is far too sensitive and in the eye for anyone to be able to pull off a stunt like that,” says an MCD official. But ever since the official launch of the mid-day meal scheme in Delhi, there have been instances of food poisoning in Delhi (The Tribune, August 29, 2003), particularly in Wazirabad and Azadpur areas. Human rights groups continue to raise a hue and cry about the quality and hygiene of the food. “Just look at the way it is served. Children are treated like beggars and food literally thrown in their plates in the most undignified manner,” says Ashok Aggarwal from the Social Jurist. But he also concedes that even in its present form, the scheme is doing some good as many children often come to the school without eating breakfast. “Good quality rice given by the government for the scheme is sold by suppliers in the market. In its place, poor quality rice, costing Rs 6-7 per kg, is bought and given to the children. The same goes for rajma, chhole and wheat flour. At times pooris are so hard that it is difficult to break them. There have also been instances when leftovers from evening schools are supplied to morning shifts,” says Social Jurist activist Bhushan Jain. In fact, a study by the Delhi-based Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD) says that in general, suppliers are groups who treat this as a business opportunity. “There are indications that there are substantial profits to be made. MCD officials testified to the enormous growth experienced by these organisations as a result of their participation in the mid-day meal scheme,” says the CORD study. Jain adds that often children studying in private schools are put on rolls of government schools to benefit school authorities, suppliers and officials. Suppliers, on the other hand, shoot down these allegations and complain of functioning under many constraints, including heavy investments, low financial allocation, delayed reimbursement, and poor quality of food grain. Brij Kishore of Stri Shakti, the NGO supplying to maximum schools in Delhi, says that at times during rainy season problems can crop up but by and large children get wholesome nutritious food. “Mostly, complaints are just for the heck of it,” he adds. In all, the mid-day meal is managing to fulfil the basic requirement: of providing free-of-cost lunch to school-going children belonging to poor families. Both Aggarwal and Jain agree that even in its watered down form, rajma and chhole do help in protecting undernourished children from classroom hunger, increasing school enrolment and attendance, and providing employment to women. The objective to boost primary education by increasing enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improve nutritional status of children in a country where more than 50 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition is a step forward. “If only people involved could be more honest,” Jain rues. The mid-day meal scheme was officially launched on July 1, 2003. Prior to that, school-going children were given dry food like biscuits, murmure or channe that hardly fulfilled the minimum nutritional requirement of 300 calories and eight to 12 grams of protein as desired by the apex court. At present, all primary schools under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), the Delhi Government and Cantonment Board are covered under the scheme. The NGOs are provided Rs 2 plus 100 grams of foodgrain per child, which officials say is sufficient to feed a child, especially when meals for lakhs of children are being cooked together. As far as the MCD is concerned, the scheme is covering 1818 MCD schools and 44 MCD-aided schools and about 9.20 lakh children, largely belonging to slums and unauthorised colonies. Eleven NGOs are running several centralised kitchens from where meals are provided to morning and evening shifts of the schools. As per MCD officials, apart from a few complaints about the food going bad during summers, the scheme is doing just fine. “A school committee, comprising staff, first checks and tastes the food before it is distributed among children. The Sri Ram Institute has been authorised to pick up random samples from kitchens as well as the school,” he adds. At the launch of the scheme in Delhi, as many as 107 NGOs applied with the MCD, out of which 70 were selected. But somewhere down the line, many opted out while 23 were thrown out following complaints. On all school days, meals, cooked by separate organisations in centralised kitchens, arrive between 8.30 am and 9.30 am and between 1.30 pm and 2.30 pm for evening shifts. NGOs involved in the scheme claim that food is cooked just four to five hours before it reaches schools. A visit to the primary school in Mandauli village in the trans-Yamuna area of Delhi on March 14 was an eye-opener. The day The Tribune team visited this MCD school, just about 6 to 7 km from the heart of the Capital at the ITO. Rajma-chawal for the evening shift arrived quite late, just about the time of the exams (3 pm) for the Class I to IV boys of the evening shift The food was not something those of us who can afford one square meal from our own pockets would look forward to. Incidentally, we visited on the rajma-chawal day. Rajma and chhole-chawal are considered among the better meals. Little Balram, Sahil, and Saif Ali told us about the time when they are served pooris too hard to chew. So why don’t they return the meals? That is because while they can write a complaint (which nobody pays heed to), they cannot return the food. Teachers and helpers tasted the food. The consensus was that rice was undercooked and rajma had very thin gravy. Twenty minutes later we were outside the gates of another school in the vicinity. It was well past 3 p.m (the scheduled hour when exams should begin) and children, with rajma-chawal plates in hand, were all over the playground with teachers nowhere in sight.
UTTAR PRADESH Some 58 children from Class I to V sit listlessly on the floor huddled in one room of the Madhopur primary school in Dubagga on the outskirts of Lucknow. The headmistress perched on the lone table and chair sits routinely calling out names.
At the stroke of mid-day, a magical change comes about as the children hear the bell of a familiar rickshaw-cart pulling outside the premises. Plates, bowls and even polythene bags are hurriedly pulled out of worn-out plastic shopping bags which pass of as school bags. Children sprint towards the rickshaw-cart which has an almost magnetic pull. After all it has brought their piping hot mid-day meal of cooked rice along with dal and spinach — the first meal for many of them since the day began. In the tearing hurry small details of hygienic importance like washing hands, and the cleanliness of the place where they sit and eat is overlooked. The worn-out teacher moving towards the cart does not feel the need to ensure it either. Children race across the narrow lane in front of the school to reach the cart parked on the other side the road. They stand in queue as the rickshaw-puller serves them food in turns. Huge servings by any standards more than their quarter-sized plates can accommodate. The quantity of food is too much for the 58 children present that day. Clearly there is a mismatch between the day’s attendance and the amount of food cooked. As soon as the food is in their possession the children squat down on the dusty floor and relish their food. The wall in front has the weekly menu painted on it. Today’s meal of rice and dal with vegetables is exactly as per the menu. The children from the anganwadi attached to the school also join the children enrolled in the primary school. The full-time anganwadi worker is on polio duty. Ten of the 40 children on the anganwadi rolls have the toughest time managing on their own. They are all toddlers and sit on the road amidst puddles of water left by the previous night’s rain. Since last year the food is being brought from the NGO-run centralised kitchen set up at the primary school complex at Napier Road, some 5 km away from this school. The MDM scheme is now managed in Lucknow city area by 10 NGOs, working in tandem with the Nagar Shiksha Adhikari. The Nagar Ayukt makes the payment to the NGO after it presents its monthly bill with the day’s school attendance annexured to it. Since then, the headmistress admits keeping tab on the quantity has not been easy as the food is prepared in a faraway kitchen keeping the previous week’s average attendance in mind. On the positive side students and parents admit that meals are now more regular, in time and exactly as per the menu. Substantiating this, Mithlesh, mother of seven-year-old Pradun, a Class I student who lives nearby, says that taste and quantity-wise the children hardly have anything to complain. She manages a household of five school-going children and two grown-ups on her husband’s income of Rs 700 to 1000 a month. Obviously, any nutritional support coming from anywhere is always welcome. Most alarming is the confession by the headmistress that the MDM scheme has had no impact on the rate of attendance. Despite the scheme calling for 80 per cent attendance to be eligible for the MDM, the teacher said that they made no such distinction and allowed every child present to eat. That day there were just 58 out of the 202 students present. While the teacher tries to put it to post-Holi mood, obviously something more engaging than food alone is required to bring the child to school day after day. Approximately 1.86 crore children are entitled to free cooked mid-day meals in their schools across the 70 districts of Uttar Pradesh. For at least 60 per cent of these children this is the first meal of the day and crucial to their nutritional status. For the education imparting agencies this is the most vital task to ensure achievement of cent per cent enrolment of 6-14-year-old children, their retention in schools and improving their standards of learning inside schools. Uttar Pradesh has been a late starter in providing hot cooked mid-day meals to children in government/government-aided schools and EGS and AIE centres. It was only on October 2, 2004, that the scheme became fully operational. Keeping this gigantic task in mind, the state government set up the Mid-Day Meal Authority under a registered society from December, 2006, in order to streamline its working and making it an autonomous body under the overall supervision of the Department of Basic Education. This year (2006-07) the state’s budget for MDM is a whopping Rs 350 crore as against Rs 330 crore the previous year (2005-06) and Rs 204 crore in the year 2004-05. The conversion cost of Rs 1 per child per day was doubled to Rs 2 per child per day from August 15, 2006, to ensure that every student gets at least 450 calories, including 12 grams of
proteins everyday. The menu has also been standardised and painted on the walls of every school to ensure transparency and accountability. The total amount that the government is spending every day on a child is Rs 3.31, which includes foodgrain, conversion cost, transport and administrative and
monitoring costs. Recently schoolchildren in a village boycotted school and took out a procession against the gram pradhan who, they charged, was not ensuring quality for their mid-day meal.
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In January, 2006, the Delhi police unearthed a massive scam in the Central Government-sponsored mid-day meal scheme, seizing eight truckloads of rice meant for primary schoolchildren that was allegedly being siphoned off by a UP-based NGO in connivance with government officials. 