EDITORIALS
Mid-day Meals and Food Politics
Government-sponsored nutritional schemes cannot be subjected to caste and religious norms.
A
fter the beef ban in Maharashtra, the “politics of food” has
now gone one step further. The Madhya Pradesh (MP)
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has refused to
“allow” eggs in the state’s anganwadis under the Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS) programme. No reasons were fur-
nished as to why the decision was taken despite the fact that his
own government’s Women and Child Development Department
proposed a breakfast including boiled eggs for children in the
three–six years’ age group in the tribal districts of Mandla,
Alirajpur and Hoshangabad. These districts are among the tribal-
dominated areas in a state that overall faces a very high inci-
dence of child malnutrition, especially in the tribal areas. The
main objective of the ICDS programme is to improve nutrition
among pregnant women, lactating mothers and preschool chil-
dren. As of now, nine states provide eggs in their anganwadis.
Should personal preferences decide state policy? Chouhan’s
principal secretary was quoted as saying that vegetarianism is a
“sentimental” issue with the Chief Minister. The Digambar Jain
Mahasamiti in the state told the media that it had met Chouhan
to block the inclusion of eggs in the meal because, it claimed, the
“sensitivity of children dies” when they eat non-vegetarian food.
MP is also among the states (mostly in Northern India) that do
not serve eggs in the mid-day meal provided under the national
programme for children in all government-run and aided schools
(from standards I to VIII) including madrasas and maqtabs that
are supported by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. In fact, the Right
to Food Campaign has pointed out that the upper-caste groups
who oppose eggs in nutrition schemes are not the ones who
would ever avail of these schemes but nonetheless continue to
influence government policies based on their own beliefs. More
importantly, while schemes like the mid-day meal are meant to
be community-oriented in nature, the “beneficiaries” are not part
of the decisions ostensibly made on their behalf.
Here it is pertinent to note that the Union Ministry of Human
Resource Development and the Chhattisgarh Department of
School Education and Literacy had conducted a joint review
mission of the state’s mid-day meal scheme in 2013. It had noted
that the menu does not have provision for more nutritious items
Economic & Political Weekly EPW june 6, 2015 vol l no 23
like eggs while states like Odisha, with a large number of tribal
districts, provide eggs. It had also accepted that eggs are of
“critical importance” in a state with high child under-nutrition,
especially in tribal areas.
To the argument that states which do not serve eggs in mid-day
meals will consider serving milk and bananas to make up for the
protein quotient, nutritionists have pointed out that boiled eggs are
easier to serve than milk and are more protein-rich. A number of
studies have shown that the mid-day meal programme, which was
started in 1995 and has evolved hugely since then, has been
exceptionally successful in attracting children to school. However,
this programme, which catered to 10.45 crore children in 11.58 lakh
schools in 2013–14, has also been the site of much manipulation,
corruption and irregularities. From attempts by large multination-
al corporations to lobby for the contract to provide “dry” meal
packets (as opposed to the cooked meal) to reports of contractors
attempting to take over the provision of meals from local women’s
self-help groups to the virtual dominance by morally righteous
vegetarianism-promoting groups over the menu, the focus has
rarely been on the children for whom it is meant.
In fact, nutritionists have pointed out that a majority of
the Dalits and tribals, and also religious minorities, are non-
vegetarians, alongside a large section of Hindus. However, it is
the upper-caste vegetarian minority that has succeeded in hav-
ing a say in the menu of the nutrition schemes.
The mid-day meal national programme and the anganwadi
scheme together look after the nutritional needs of crores of Indian
children. The former has also been responsible for raising the
enrolment in schools, especially of girls. For many of the children,
the meals provided by these schemes are their only protection
from hunger. The need of the hour then is to work at removing
the shortcomings like lack of overall monitoring, supervision of
cooking, freeing teachers from menial tasks like buying provisions
for the meal and ensuring that the village education council and the
school management committee (which ensure community partici-
pation) do their jobs diligently. These schemes are far too important
for the future of India to subject them to personal, caste and reli-
gious preferences which are not shared by the beneficiaries.
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