India’s Deadly Meals

On July 16, however, the proverb hit back with diabolic vigour. The free school lunch killed 23 children in Chhapra, Bihar. The incident, one of the deadliest food poisoning outbreaks in yea­rs, has justifiably focu­sed national attention on all that is wrong with the government-sponso­r­ed mid-day meal, the world’s largest school-feeding programme. Bi­h­ar is in the doghouse for lack of monitoring and serious mismanagement of this flagship nu­trition programme. A Spe­cial Investigation Team is looking into the tragedy; the local police have arrested the headmistress of the school where the children died. Meanwhile, the political drama in the state continues — the Nitish Ku­mar government hints darkly at a conspiracy behind the killer insecticide contaminated cooking oil.

This, alongside a steady drip of reports about dead lizards, rats and rotten eggs in mid-day meals in other states successfully convey a frightening absence of oversight of this scheme across the country. A 2010 evaluation rep­ort of the scheme by the Planning Commission came up with some disturbing findings, including the fact that a majority of sample schools in most states, except Ta­mil Nadu and Kerala, were found to have eit­her no kitchen sheds or poorly maintained ones. The national level revi­ew meeting of the sch­eme for 2011-12 held by the ministry of human resource development also highlighted the ground level challenges. But, despite the flood of bad news, there are examples which suggest that making the scheme work is not rocket science. Nor is it solely a matter of how much money is pumped in. What really distingui­shes the performers fr­om the laggards can be summed up in two words: political priority. Whe­re the mid-day meal has been a top political priority, monitoring mec­hanisms function.

Where the scheme is not among the top political priorities, there is lack of supervision, resulting in the all-too-familiar sorry state of affairs that we have been hearing about from Bihar and other states. To put things in perspective, Bihar is beginning to take corrective steps. In the aftermath of the tragedy, it anno­un­ced its decision to build kitchen sheds in 7,225 schools. Since the mid-day meal tragedy, Bi­h­ar’s school teachers had refused to do any supervisory work relating to the scheme. They have withdrawn their boycott after the state government assured them that within six months, alternative arrangements would be made.

All these measures are in the right direction. But there is much more to be done and the road ahead is unlikely to be smooth. There is a provision, for example, for the active engagement of sch­ool management com­mi­ttees and parents for quality assurance and monitoring of the programme. But in practice, this happens only in states where the mid-day meal and food in general has been on top of the political agenda. Ritwij Kumar, a Bihar-based food rights researcher who works with Koshish Charitable Trust, says one of the key problems in the sta­te is that parents whose children benefit from the mid-day meal are often not fully aware of the provisions of the scheme.

Sometimes, na­m­es of parents are inc­lu­ded in monitoring committees without them bei­ng aware of it. Ku­mar says he has never met a single parent su­pervising mid-day meals during his field visits to some 1,000 schools since 2009. In many families, there are absentee fa­th­ers. They have moved to cities in search of a livelihood. The women who stay behind in the village are not educated, sometimes not even literate, and unable to ne­go­tiate with the administration for better food for their children. In stark contrast, there is Tamil Nadu, where the number of eggs that should be included in the mid-day meal for schoolchildren is a political issue no matter which party is in power, says Dipa Sinha, an activist with the Right to Food Campaign.

The Karunanidhi government offered three eggs a week per child as part of the mid-day meal. The Jayalalithaa government changed that to five eggs a week. Tamil Nadu, the first state to launch a mid-day meal scheme for primary school children in 1962-63, offers many other lessons on how to get it right. The state was among the first to recognise the pivotal role of cooks in the success of the scheme. It is the only state to recognise mid-day meal cooks as permanent state government employees and offer them the full range of benefits — a nut­ritious meal organiser in Tamil Nadu gets Rs 5,000, in addition to provident fund and pension.

Indian police have arrested the headmistress of a school where 23 children died after being...
Such policy measures have been as much due to pressure from the community as the political calculations of the par­ty in power. The Chhattisgarh governme­nt has also started a tr­a­i­ning programme for co­oks of the mid-day meal scheme and their assistants to educate them ab­out hygiene and the nut­ritional value of food. That being said, one must also take into account the sheer scale of the programme which caters to nearly 120 million children every day. Some mishaps can, and will happen, even in a relatively well governed state. For example, hot on the heels of the tra­gedy in Bihar, around 100 girl students fell sick, apparently aft­er ea­t­ing contaminated eggs given as part of the free mid-day meal in a Neyveli school, in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district, despite the existence of monitoring mechanisms.

The point to note, however, is the speed with which corrective action was taken. Will other states follow the example of performers like Tamil Nadu? That would depend a lot on whether the mid-day meal in these states becomes as much of a political issue as it is in Tamil Nadu. As for money, Bihar reportedly failed to use the Central funds for this scheme. And I am sure it is not the only one.

Free lunch has gone out of fashion in these recessionary times. But the free school lunch in a country where 43 per cent of children under five are underweight and 48 per cent are stunted due to chronic undernutrition is a must. Needless to say, it must also be safe.