NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Ride up a tiny bylane in Fatorda and there’s a three room home with a small extended room from where the Integrated Balwaddi runs for children in the age group of three years to 6 years. Two Anganwaddi workers have been hired to look after the 40 odd kids. It’s a small cramped room and the children are seated on the cold floor in the monsoons. There’s not enough room, so one Anganwaddi worker is seated outside the room with a cane. The Anganwadis who are residents of this same home and run a catering business look at this as a feeder to their catering business wherein they provide the mid-day meal.
Similarly, as we go up the Moti Dongor we come across a Balwaddi that runs out off a primary school. In a single room the kids are learning while half the room has grain and cereals to be distributed to the girl child and a massive weigh scale hanging from the building right in the middle of the room that can hit the head of the child.
Sajjan Dessai similarly, a former Panch member in Sanguem tells us, “Balwaddis are equivalent to private kindergartens and are government run to provide free education but sadly the quality of education and infrastructure is terrible. The proposal and permission to run a Balwadi is given by the Directorate of Women and Child Development based on the population in the area especially population of Below Poverty Line cardholders.”
Similarly Diego Dias tells us the Balwadi in his locality in Quepem has leaking roofs, rats roaming on the cereal and grains stored in the Balwadi, the beam of the roof is cracked and never fixed since 1963 and the Anganwadis are always on election duty.
But the parents and Anganwadi workers seem to have reached a happy understanding. They go away for duties like elephantitis vaccination, census duty and all other duties. The parents meanwhile are happy that the kids are playing in the nearby fields and hence nobody wants their children to hampered in these Balwaddis and nobody wants to leave their kids in the custody of the Anganwadis. Even on working days entertain carpet salesmen and are busy utensil shopping instead of teaching dance, music and alphabet to the children.
And finally, this comment from a parent sums up the mess. “The Anganwadis at the Balwadi near our home also has the mid-day meal contract for a nearby primary school and she teaches the kids Devanagri alphabets and gets the kids to recite the same thing twenty times while in the same room she cooks with a commercial gas cylinder and fries chillies in toxic oil while the children cough,” said Juned Shaikh who lives along Curchorem.
