More Than A Meal
How our country’s future lies within the confines of a hot plate of food
While free or subsidized school lunches are often a political ticket to play to the emotional side of voters, such as the controversy surrounding Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK Chief Minister Marudur Gopalan Ramachandran, they play a crucial role in securing a nation’s health and economy. Studies link these free meals to better nutrition and educational outputs, lower health costs in the future, and a more productive labor force.
In Latin American countries like Brazil, Honduras, Bolivia, Paraguay, El Salvador, Cuba, and Ecuador, universal meals are provided to children even at the pre-school level and have helped in reducing stunting by 56% in the last 25 years. A school in Benin, a primarily-rural economy in West Africa where only 2 out of 10 households had one meal a day, witnessed an increase in pupil enrollment from 84 to 145, a multiplier effect on the economy, as well as a more inclusive environment for students as a result of free lunches. Countries such as the United Kingdom often hold India as a standard for opening coffers for the health of their children.
India’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) is a $2 billion yearly scheme that feeds around 100 million children and is the largest program in the world that does so for free. The National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE) was first launched on 15 August 1995 and soon spread across the nation, eventually taking the form of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
However, even after 25 years of program launch, 35 out of 100 children in India are stunted and are at risk of cognitive and physical underdevelopment. While there has still been an improvement in stunting (height for weight), wasting (weight for height) is still a big (seriously big) issue. Today, India ranks as the 22nd “Most Hungry” nation, with the World Bank estimating that its levels of child malnutrition exceed those of Sub-Saharan Africa, and the MDMS remains unable to effectively tackle this issue.
While the Mid-Day Meal Scheme set out to deliver hot meals to students of Grade 1 to 8 and encourage them to return to school every day, the program has also faced a tumultuous past. 23 children died when they ingested pesticide-ridden food in Bihar, while 31 children fell ill due to gastroenteritis in Maharashtra. The program has serious implementation flaws and is hindered by corruption at each stage of the hierarchy.
In Bihar, 75% of the schools in one district did not receive enough foodgrains to serve the children, and leakages are found all along the system. In Uttar Pradesh, the food served to the students was less than sufficient, while in Bihar meals weren’t served at all for long periods of time.
Some of the issues faced by the program include the lack of quality checks at decentralized locations in districts, which often find logistical hurdles with the supply of raw ingredients and vegetables due to their isolated nature. Districts are also responsible for sanctioning the transfer of money and grains, however, in the absence of sufficient infrastructure or capacity, they are unable to maintain records and regulate the quality of food.
Yamini Aiyar, the Director of the Centre for Policy Research told The Guardian that the program’s problem is that, “Too many layers of government were involved in the scheme, resulting in poor information, coordination, and monitoring.”
Cooks hired were not paid enough, or on time, while teachers were made to bear the burden of teaching as well as cooking and feeding the students, which took away the time allocated to teaching activities and reduce their efficiency. In Rajasthan, the implementation of the scheme reinforced social inequalities with students from lower castes being forbidden from using school utensils. Further, complaints of a lack of nutritional balance were further found.
Several attempts have been made to respond to these criticisms. Various NGOs such as Naandi Foundation, Akshaya Patra, and Annamrita Foundation have acted as Mid-Day Meal providers and worked with the government to provide structure and support. In 2009, food norms were altered to increase protein intake from 25 to 30 grams, vegetables from 65 to 75 grams, and by decreasing the quantity of oil and fat from 10 grams to 7.5 grams. Further, the honorarium for cooks was increased to Rs. 1,000. In 2020–21, the government increased funds to add mango, guava, and gooseberries twice a week to the meals of the students. In 2020, the allocated budget for MDMS was increased by Rs. 1054 crore and the National Education Policy (2020) has proposed the addition of breakfasts for school-age children, where fruits and chana mixed with jaggery can also be served.
However, unless the structural and design issues are fixed, it’s unlikely that the addition of breakfasts would change the situation for the school children. Few suggestions to improve the program include food fortification to include micronutrients and integrating millets into the meal, which has been adopted by Maharashtra’s government by replacing khichdi with bhakris made with millets. Well-structured competitive State Ranking Systems based on reliable data, with this information being made available at the local district level, is also one of the solutions proposed. The MDMS that is currently handled by the Ministry of Education, could further be integrated better with the other initiatives and Ministries within the POSHAN Abhiyaan to improve nutritional status, and campaigns like Swacch Vidyalaya could be used to reinforce supplemental habits that can support the MDMS.
In the villages of Madhya Pradesh, 96% of the parents still want the scheme to continue and 63% of parents and 74% of teachers believed that the Mid-Day Meal improved children’s learning abilities.
The question that remains is that of how to restructure and strengthen the existing framework to collect valid data, assess gaps, resolve logistical problems, and achieve food security. A question that increased funding and new initiatives alone won’t solve, yet a question that dictates the future for millions of children that are being raised on Indian soil.
