Midday meal scheme in India dogged by scams

New Delhi: 27 young children died in Bihar and more than 30 were taken ill, allegedly due to food-poisoning from the free mid-day meal at a government-run primary school near Chhapra in the central part of the state. Most of the children who died were younger than 10. Dead children were buried near the school, as many are still battling for life in hospital. So what exactly is the Midday Meal Scheme? Is it really helping schoolchildren? Let's peep into the history and find out is it really a boon or a curse? Mid day meal programme is the popular name for the school meal programme in India. It involves provision of lunch/snacks/meal free of cost to school children on school working days. The key objectives of the programme are: protecting children from classroom hunger, increasing school enrollment and attendance, improved socialization among children belonging to all castes, addressing malnutrition, and social empowerment through provision of employment to women. Mid day meals, as a public welfare concept in India, dates back to 1925 when such a project was launched for the underprivileged children in the then Madras Corporation area. One of the pioneers, Madras Corporation started providing cooked meals to children in Corporation schools in the Madras city; the programme was later introduced on a larger scale in 1960s. Tamil Nadu's midday meal programme is among the best known in the country. The programme was introduced at a national level by the government of India in the late 50s and early 60s and later in the 80s as a centrally sponsored programme. Although the programme in Tamil Nadu was initially termed as an act of "Populism", the success of the scheme made the project hugely popular. The success was so spectacular that in 1995, the then Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao hailed the success of the project and suggested that the scheme be implemented all over the country, and thus began the "National Programme for Nutrition Support to Primary Education". On November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court gave a famous direction that made it mandatory for the state governments to provide cooked meals. But various scams involving Midday Meal Scheme have been unearthed since it was started. Distribution of contract of Midday meal scheme is one of the most corrupt practice in India. In January 2006, the Delhi Police unearthed a scam in the Midday Meal Scheme. In December 2005, the police had seized eight truckloads of rice meant for primary schoolchildren being carried from Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns in Bulandshahr District of UP to North Delhi. When the police detained the trucks, the drivers claimed that the rice was being brought all the way to Delhi to be cleaned at a factory. Later it was found that the rice was being siphoned off by a UP-based NGO, Bharatiya Manav Kalyan Parishad, in connivance with the government officials. In November 2006, the residents of Pembong village under the Mim tea estate (around 30 km from Darjeeling), accused a group of teachers of embezzling midday meals. In a written complaint, the residents claimed that students at the primary school had not got midday meal for the past 18 months. In December 2006, a scam was reported involving government schools that siphon off foodgrains under the midday meal scheme by faking attendance. The modus operandi of the schools was simple—the attendance register would exaggerate the number of students enrolled in the class. The additional students would not exist—they were "enrolled" to get additional foodgrains which were pocketed by the school staff. Due to all these scams and contaminated foods many schoolchildren also lost their lives latest being the Bihar incident. Despite the success of the program, child hunger as a problem still persists in India.