In Maya’s UP, kids won’t eat mid-day meal cooked by a Dalit

On Friday, The Indian Express found barely a hundred students eating the meal, tehri, rice and vegetables cooked together. The rest ate food brought from home, a practice that started on December 10, the day the Dalit woman, Phool Kumari Rawat, started cooking.

Senior students who are boycotting the food say Phool Kumari’s cooking is unhygienic. Kaushal Srivastava, Block Resource Centre in-charge, who was present on Friday, told the students that there was nothing wrong with the food. He even ate it in front of them to allay their apprehensions. But the students refused to budge.

Younger students are more direct, readily admitting that it was Phool Kumari’s caste that was the problem. “I will not eat anything cooked by that lady. I have heard my family members say that she is from some low caste. So I bring my own lunch box,” said Shivani Singh Chauhan, a student of Class IV.

Ateet Kumar, student of Class V, said the school was in a Thakur area and they refuse to eat whatever she cooks. “Only children from Phool Kumari’s area are eating,” he said.

Both administration officials and the teachers agree that the students are being instigated.

Lucknow District Magistrate Chandra Bhanu is sure “someone is playing politics and instigating the children. I have asked my officers to find out the person and that person will be punished.”

Teachers allege the students have been provoked by village pradhan Ram Babu Chaurasia, who belongs to Samajwadi Party and has cases under SC/ST Act registered against him.

“There is no caste politics in our school. It’s just the pradhan who is provoking the children,” said Vidya Dhar Dixit, the headmaster of the Bibipur Junior High School. He, however, added: “The kids are not eating the food because it is not good and is unhygienic.”

Chaurasia has other reasons to cite: “There aren’t enough utensils, so the cooking gets delayed and by that time, the students have eaten their own food.”

Strangely, it was a village-level committee, consisting of the pradhan, the teachers as well as parents, who had appointed Phook Kumari.

Srivastava believes the problem can be solved if the Pradhan and teachers work in tandem. “We are checking the quality of the meal each day so the students cannot complain of poor quality.”

Phool Kumari Rawat, who gets Rs 58 a day for cooking mid-day meals, admits the food she cooks may not always be very tasty because the quantity is large and it can get difficult to maintain proportions. “Sometimes, it happens even when we cook at home. But education officers have eaten the food and found nothing wrong with it. I am a widow with three kids. Earlier I worked as a labourer. If they remove me from here, I will accept it as my fate and will again work as a labourer.”