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Food for Thought

Under a new welfare programme, Madhya Prdaesh is giving free meals to school children, laboureres and in holy towns. India Today's Neeraj Mishra takes a look at the novel scheme.

A hungry man is an angry man. Conversely, a full stomach brings with it a sense of peace. It is perhaps the wisdom of these words that have prompted the Uma Bharati Government in Madhya Pradesh to launch a mid-day meal scheme not just in schools but also for daily-wage labourers in the city.

By far the most imaginative food scheme, it has replaced dalia with roti-sabji, dal-bhat and Panjiri in the schools. Municipal bodies have been authorised to make budget provisions for subsidised cooked food for daily labourers in cities. And that's not all. Holy towns too will have a full Malwa meal as prasadam at a mere Rs 5.

For Bharati, the scheme fulfills a personal dream. As a child, she apparently dropped out of school because the family did not have enough to eat. Those were the pre-green revolution days and Bundelkhand was facing a drought. "I went to temples and homes to recite the Ramayana and we survived on seedha (food donation). I could not complete my education because that would have been an additional burden on the family,'' she recalls. Ever since, she has nurtured thoughts on what she could do to eliminate hunger.

As things stood, a provision of Rs 16-17 crore had been made by the Centre for free meals in Madhya Pradesh. Free ration was provided and an average of 50 to 75 paise was spent on each child. The Tribal Department had earmarked another Rs 18 crore for children in tribal blocks. Unfortunately, most schools provided bad quality dalia which children did not eat. There were several incidents of children taking ill in Gwalior and in the Vindhya region last summer. Some districts had taken to simply distributing 1 kg dalia per student per week without cooking or serving it to them at the stipulated time.

But Bharati has put an end to this. She has appointed Pankaj Raag, IAS officer, as head of the Mid-day Meal Programme and has clubbed all budgets together to provide for her ambitious scheme of cooked meals for all school children. "For now we have chosen 200 schools across the state as a pilot project. In a year's time we should be able to extend it to all 86,000 primary schools in the state,'' says Raag. An estimated Rs 200 crore would be required to feed all the children six-days a week for an academic year.

That, however, should be taken care of. "We have clubbed the budget for similar schemes under the Panchayat Department, Gramodaya Yojana and tribal department to make a provision of around Rs 100 crore and we have concluded talks with the DFID to plug the Rs 130 crore gap with grants,'' says Raag. It appears the DFID would do it for the first year and assess the success of the programme before committing itself further. Bharati is hopeful that the grant will come through for all five years. "I will not take loans but would depend on grants to feed the school children and would welcome a private initiative for other food programmes as well,'' says Bharati.

The chief minister's personal visits to schools ensures that the meals are prompt, complete and clean. Some schools in Bundelkhand have even chalked out different menus for different days. The cooked meal scheme has also provided employment to two cooks for every 100 children in each school.
Under another project being run by Urban Development Department, meals are being provided from centrally located outlets to labourers. These are subsidised meals available for Rs 5 per head. Right now the department does not have a specific budget but is depending on goodwill of NGOs and social organisations. Some subsidy is also being given by municipal corporations and the urban development department as this is confined to the urban areas. Towns like Sehore, Bhopal, Gwalior and Chhtarpur have started the afternoon subsidized meals at vantage points like bus and railway stations. Altogether, 32 such bhojnalayas are being run across the state with the help of NGOs wherever possible.

The bhojans, interestingly, are coupled with bhajans too. At least in the holy towns of Ujjain, Maheshwar, Omkareshwar and Amarkantak. Pilgrims to these places enjoy the flavour of Malwa kitchens. The Mahakaal Temple committee in Ujjain which is headed by the collector has decided to start a meal scheme wherein a complete Shirdi-type meal would be available for Rs 4 per head. The scheme will be run by an NGO, the Ujjaini Seva Samiti, which has similar schemes in local district hospitals for patients. In the other three towns, the local municipal bodies and the district administration are doing the needful. With so many mouths being fed, peace, it appears, is aplenty in Madhya Pradesh.

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