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Corporate India can change the face of Mid Day meal
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Monday, 23 August, 2010, 14 : 00 PM [IST]
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Hasan Mulani, Mumbai
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 The mid day meal scheme, which was started in June 2002 in all the government schools, today faces an array of problems.
The scheme popularly known as "School Meal Programme,"involves provision of lunch free of cost to school-children on all working days. The key objective of the programme was to protect children from classroom hunger, increase school enrollment and attendance, address malnutrition and social empowerment through provision of employment to women.
According to various media reports, so far, over 12 crore children are covered under the scheme, which makes it the largest school lunch programme in the world. Allocation for this programme has been enhanced from Rs 3,010 crore in 2002 to Rs 9,300 crore in 2010-11.
Before the launch of the mid day meal scheme, the government had started the National Programme for Nutrition Support to Primary Education where the Centre offered free of cost grains and states provided the costs of other ingredients, salaries and infrastructure.
Since most of the state governments were unwilling to commit budgetary resources, they just passed on the grains to the parents. This system was called provision of "dry rations." On November 28, 2004, the Supreme Court of India gave a famous direction that made it mandatory for the state governments to provide cooked meals instead of "dry rations." The direction was to be implemented from June 2002 but was violated by most of the states. With sustained pressure from the court, media and in particular from the Right to Food Campaign, more and more states started providing cooked meals.
In May 2004, a new coalition government was formed at the Centre, which promised universal provision of cooked meals fully funded by the Centre. This was in its Common Minimum Programme, followed by enhanced financial support to the states for cooking and building sufficient infrastructure. Given this additional support, the scheme has expanded its reach to cover most of the children in primary schools across the country.
To keep the programme on and also help the government,many NGOs stepped in, took the project on voluntary basis and offered qualitative food to the school children. One of them was the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISCKON) Food Relief Foundation.
Since 2004, ISCKON's Food Relief Foundation has been offering nutritious food (khichdi) to over 7,50,000 kids in India out of which 1,75,000 kids are from Maharashtra. The foundation has 14 centres across 8 states in the country.
Radha Krishna Das, managing programme director of ISKCON Food Relief Foundation, shares his views on the problems and prospects of the mid day meal programme and his future plans in an exclusive interview with Hasan Mulani of Food & Beverage News.
Excerpts:
What drives ISCKON to leap in the mid meal programme?
It was the desire of his divine grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, that no one should go hungry, especially children. So out of love and compassion he asked his followers to carry out mass food distribution programme - food for life.
So when this opportunity to distribute food to the needy came, ISKCON decided to implement this programme on behalf of the government. We call it School=Lunch programme.
To expand this project to benefit the underprivileged children in other parts of the country, we formed a non-profit, charitable trust registered under The Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 named ISKCON Food Relief Foundation, the trust has been organising mid day meal programme in other regions besides Mumbai, such as Delhi, Jaipur, Tirupati, Ujjain, Palghar, Wada and Nigdi in Pune.
How did ISCKON setup the state-of-the-art technology kitchen for food preparation?
Initially, strategies were rolled out for setting up kitchens in each of the five pilot schools in the five wards of south zone (Mumbai). However, following a fire mishap in one of the midday meal kitchen in a school in Kombakarnam in Tamilnadu, in 2004, the government passed a notification disallowing any cooking in schools.
Changing our initial plans and choosing a safer system, we opted for setting up a central kitchen. We started looking for a suitable place and in the mean time started the activity on a moderate scale from our kitchen at Chowpatty. We also received the permission to carry out the programme in the municipal schools of Mira Bhayandar Municipality.
A kitchen was set up on the fifth floor of Bhaktivedanta Hospital at Shrishti Complex, Mira Road East. This kitchen has a capacity of cooking a meal for 20,000 students per day
Another state-of-the-art 1200 sq. ft kitchen is at Jaywant Industrial Estate at Tardeo, which has the capacity of serving up to 24,000 students per day. Further, our centralised kitchens are ISO certified and have technology intensive models that can be efficiently scaled and replicated.
How many varieties of khichdi are served during the week?
Different varieties of wholesome nutritious khichdi are prepared under stringent hygienic conditions as recommended by the nutritionist using different ingredients each day. Lentils such as Kabuli Chana, Rajma, Tur Dal, Moong Dal etc. are used so that the khichdi is rich in proteins. To add to the nutritional value, different varieties of vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, pumpkin and tomatoes are used. The spicing is done to give it a different taste and flavour each day and we use pure ghee for the tadka.
What technology do you use to cook khichdi?
We always aim to serve warm food to children. Currently, every kitchen has water purifier which helps us to use clean water, big vessels of around 300 kg, exclusively designed utensils, sealing & packaging tools, washing patterns etc.
What are the hurdles for the programme? How can they be resolved?
There are many hurdles for the programme. The difficulty starts from the pathetic quality of rice provided by the FCI (100gms per student per day). We use sophisticated "colour sorting technology" for rice sorting and cleaning process. Further, the state government provides only about Rs 1.75 per student to cook a day's meal. The inflow of money from the government is irregular.
With the current inflation rate, it requires around Rs 4.50 to Rs 5 per student to prepare nutritious food (khichdi). We also use pure ghee instead of edible oil which gives more nutrition to the food. In addition, Rs 1.75 per student is insufficient compared to the cost of kitchens, utensils, man power, energy, ingredients and others.
According to our calculations, a donation/contribution of Rs 900 to our foundation could feed one student for a year. We started spreading this information among our society and others. All donations made to ISKCON Food Relief Foundation are 100% exempted from Income Tax under Sec 35AC. The project is transparent, professionally managed, run by a board of trustees with the support of the advisory committee formed by corporate heads and experts in various fields.
We also seek help from media to stretch this information in the society.
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