Monitor mid-day meals
The latest incident of children taking ill after consuming a mid day meal has focussed attention on the programme, that in Goa has generated considerable amount of rancour. The current incident itself has seen an undue amount of politics, with the minister from the area blaming the Congress for renewing the contract of the food supplier, that is alleged to have made mess ups in the past. The incident has seen the contractor, who also happens to have political ties, being booked, with the police in the area making a point to mention that the offences were non-bailable. The contractor has defended herself, questioning why only one school in particular, was affected, when the same supplies were made to other schools as well.
Mid day meals and the adverse incidents that have occurred have unfortunately become a political football in Goa. 82 organisations supply the meals to around 1500 government and government aided schools in Goa, covering an estimated 1,65,000 students. Most are NGOs in the form of self help groups and mahila mandals, that have in the recent past become ferociously politicised. It is no secret that the party in power favours particular groups over others, to service clusters of schools. While the contracts provide employment to local women, the intense blame game and rivalry could endanger what is essentially a good programme.
With each incident of this sort, the scare increases and more children stay away from availing the benefit of the scheme. Some voices are already calling for scrapping the programme, providing the subsidy to parents etc. A year ago, in an obvious swipe at his predecessors and the central government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development that allots the rice and wheat for the programme, the chief minister claimed the rice provided was not fit for animals. Was it an exaggeration, since the same menu of pulao, pato bhaji pao, and sheera continues to be provided and consumed?
Additionally, the quality and quantity of rice and wheat is claimed to be properly checked by state nodal officers, besides the state government having its own steering and monitoring committees at state, district, block and school levels. Incidentally, this was at a time when Goa reportedly topped the country in inspections and supply of meals, besides registering near 100 % coverage, along with Kerala.
The State government’s proposals to replace the menu with more nutritious chapatis, and the sheera with flavoured milk, upma, idli and fruit once a week, have not been implemented yet. Reports from the ground suggest that while the nutritional content of the meals can be improved, there is nothing per se wrong with these basically Goan items, except the varying quality. Monitoring committees from the ministry of human resources were informed that children found the pulao dry, the menu was repetitive and the bread quantity supplied was inadequate. Officials at the time pointed out that contractors were working on prices fixed in 2008, while food costs have escalated since. In the last budget, the government hiked the earlier spending from Rs 3.83 per child to Rs 5.31 per child, picking up the additional spends of Rs 2.5 cr.
What can obviously be stepped up, aside from the budget, is the monitoring of hygiene standards at kitchens and quality of grains supplied, for which a central scheme provides a budget of Rs 25 lakh.
An FDA check on a sampling of kitchens, after a previous case of children taking ill, revealed that hygiene standards in 90 per cent of the kitchens were not upto scratch. The programme in Goa would do well to ensure that these improve across the board and that checking is fair. There can be no compromise with the health and well being of children. Given that a large number of middle class students in government aided schools opt out of the meal programme, an audit of the accounts and number of children actually taking the meals, should also be undertaken at some point.
Across India, the mid day meal scheme initiated by the PV Narasimha Rao government in 1995 has become the worlds largest child feeding programme, covering 110 million students in 1.2 million schools. The national programme has reportedly been particularly successful in increasing school enrollment, increasing attendance and retention, reducing literacy, reducing the drop out rate and narrowing down gender mismatch in school enrollments. It employs some 2.4 million cooks/helpers, mostly women working in 577,000 kitchens and stores.
It would be a tragedy to let petty political one upmanship with the Centre and worse still, petty local politics harm the programme in the State.
