Editor,
It was 12:20 pm, just as the break time was over, a teacher arrived in class and, with a smile, asked, “Toh aj ka midday meal tasty ta?” A student replies, “Aj hmlok ko khichari nahi diya!” Then the teacher asked why. Then a student said “All the cooks-cum-helpers are sick, so they didn’t come.” The class was silent for a second, then the teacher told a joke to the students, and the whole class started to laugh, and somehow they forgot about khichari.
The midday meal (MDM) is a one-time cooked meal that is served to all the children of Class 1 to 8 studying in government schools and government-aided schools. This scheme was launched on 15 August, 1995, and Kerala was the first state in India to implement the MDM scheme. To revamp the scheme, the government of India made certain modifications to it and relaunched it in September 2021 as PM Poshan or Pradhan MantriPoshan Shakti Nirman for five years, from 2021-’22 to 2025-’26, with a budget of Rs 1,30,794.90 crore. The government hopes it will benefit 11.80 crore children studying in 11.20 lakh schools across India. Under this scheme, students of pre-primary (children in the 3-5 years age group) are also going to benefit, along with primary (Class 1-5) and upper primary (Class 6-8) schoolchildren. One of the prime objectives of this scheme is to improve the nutritional status of the children studying in pre-primary, primary, upper primary, and also to reduce under nutrition by 2 percent annually and anemia by 3 percent annually.
Some of the salient features of this scheme are: 1) Provision of a kitchen for cooking the midday meal and a storage room for food grains and vegetables. 2) Strict guidelines for cleanliness of the kitchen and storage room, such as pest control, clean water supply, testing of water and cooked meals, and provision for hand-washing for children. 3) Quantity of cooked meal for each children; for the children of pre-primary and primary class, per meal should be consists of 100 grams food grain (rice/wheat), 20 gms of pulses, 50 gms of vegetables, 5 gms of oil/fat and for the children of upper primary class, per meal should be consists of 150 gram food grain (rice/wheat), 30 gms of pulses, 75 gms of vegetables, 7.5 gms of oil/fat. 4) Provision of honoraria for cooks-cum-helpers. 5) To boost the concept of Vocal for Local and Atmanirbhar Bharat through using locally grown items such as millets, vegetables, etc, and involving women’s self-help groups for better outreach of the scheme. 6) Establishing a nutrition garden in schools to give children firsthand experience with nature and gardening. 8) A nutrition expert is to be appointed in each school whose responsibility is to regularly conduct check-ups such as body mass index (BMI), weight, haemoglobin levels, etc.
The whole structure of this scheme is very captivating and comprehensive. However, at ground zero, the story is very different. At first, the administrative part: The midday meal is supervised by the head of the school and a teacher in-charge. Such an additional workload may create an extra load on them, and eventually such a load has the potential to disrupt their daily work.
Secondly, many times the quality of rice gets compromised for many reasons, and sometimes the delivery of rice gets delayed. Thirdly, the honorarium of cook-cum-helper is so low that no right candidate comes for the recruitment. Fourth, many government schools don’t have a proper kitchen and storage room. Some do, but the hygiene of such kitchens and storage rooms is not up to par and the list goes on.
Those are some of the basic problems that many schools are facing, and so, to imagine having a nutrition expert is like a sin.
However, we can’t just sit and watch this epic over and over. The competent authority should take this matter under their cognisance and come up with certain remedies. There is one remedy to solve the above mentioned problems, but it’s not universal. However, the state can initiate it as an initial project, and later, if it succeeds, it can be implemented on a large scale.
To do this, initially the state government should choose the Itanagar Capital Region and Pasighat, as these cities have better road connectivity. Then establish or rent a big plant and equip it with all the necessary technology that is required to cook a midday meal. This way, a cooked meal can be transported from the plant to all the government schools. In such a way, one plant will deliver a hot, cooked midday meal to all the schools.
The state government can tie up with foundations like the AskhayaPatra Foundation and other NGOs that engage in such centralised distribution of food for better implementation of midday meal. This solution has one drawback: it cannot be applied where the road connectivity is poor, but something is better than nothing.
The government school is not just a school but a home for many underprivileged children, a hope for a better life, a guide who helps them chase their dreams, and a place where they feel safe and protected. And the midday meal is like a source of power that encourages them to come to school regularly and concentrate only on studying with a full stomach. Maybe this is not a serious problem for us, but for them (the children), the midday meal is one of the many reasons why they come to school.
Keyom Doni,
Asst Coordinator,
YMCR-AP, Itanagar