Opinion Who moved that meal?
The mid-day meal scheme is being burdened by job creation....
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We recently had a visit from a couple of government schoolteachers. They were in a foul mood. This was their third visit to our house,and on earlier two occasions the house was locked. If you had left a note telling us when you would come next,we would have been at home. This visit was for National Population Register (NPR),evidently a precursor to the Census,and wouldnt be a valid visit unless the so-called head of the household was at home. The teachers didnt react to my comment. Perhaps advance notices arent permissible. Who knows? With advance notices,residents might disappear,or non-residents surface,thereby distorting the NPR. Instead,they told me about their grievances. How residents regard this as a nuisance,though this is a public cause,how this ruins their Sunday. Shouldnt they have better things to do? Yes,government teachers should have better things to do,like teach. One should sympathise with them for the two nuisances they mentioned,Census and election duties. However,since they were from urban Delhi,they didnt mention a third superfluous duty cooking mid-day meals.
Going back to its origins in Tamil Nadu,the mid-day meal scheme (MDMS) is supposed to have several benefits increase school enrollment,reduce malnutrition among children,break down caste barriers and even provide incremental employment to women (for cooking mid-day meals). On June 1,UPA-II submitted a report to the people for 2009-10,and this is what it says on the MDMS. Under the National Programme of Mid-Day Meals in schools,the cooking cost has been enhanced. Further,cooks-cum-helpers are now being paid Rs 1000 per month for their part-time services. The cost of construction of kitchen-cum-store has also been rationalised by linking it to the states schedule of rates. During 2009-10,about 11 crore children were benefited by the scheme. The HRD ministrys annual report mentions a figure closer to 12 crore. There is the occasional report about scams in government schools,where attendance registers are fudged for food-grain siphoned off into the market.
Even if there is some fudging,110 or 120 million is substantial. What do we know from assorted studies on the MDMS,though these are often state or region specific? Enrollment and attendance increase,especially among girls and SC/STs. Teacher absenteeism drops. Social distances decline and there is some net increment in employment,especially among women. However,even if none of this had happened,given the state of under-nourishment and hunger among children,the MDMS is a good thing even if,as sometimes happens,children enroll in a government school for the MDMS,uniforms and textbooks,and simultaneously enroll in a private (often unrecognised) school for education.
What is a good thing? Giving mid-day meals to children. What however is this business about cooking costs,cooks-cum-helpers and kitchen-cum-stores,mentioned in the quote? This illustrates how governments jump from a desirable end to an undesirable,inefficient and complicated means,and delivery. As a Centrally sponsored scheme (CSS),MDMS started in 1995,though not everywhere in the country and not in every type of school. At that stage,dry rations (food-grain) at the rate of 3 kg per child per month were provided under the CSS and,yes,there were instances of FCI food-grain (of doubtful quality to start with) being siphoned by school officials. After a PIL in 2001 and the Supreme Courts judgment,MDMS switched from dry rations to cooked meals. These meals must be for 200 days (drought-affected areas also have MDMS during summer vacations) and every child per day must have 300 calories and 8-12 g of protein. (These norms have progressively been increased and vegetables also included,but we can ignore those complications.) Of this,the Central subsidy would be for 100 g of food-grain per child per day and a transportation subsidy. But states clamoured for more. So we soon had a cooking subsidy.
One would have understood had it been for pulses,cooking oil,condiments and fuel. However,it also covered wages and remuneration for cooks-cum-helpers,assistance for management,monitoring and evaluation and Central subsidies also extended to constructing kitchen-cum-stores and procuring kitchen devices (stoves,containers,utensils). For instance,Rs 60,000 initially used to be given for constructing kitchen-cum-stores,now further complicated by bringing in plinth area norms and state schedules. The cooking cost (excluding administrative and labour charges) per child per day (2009-10) was Rs 2.50 for primary and Rs 3.75 for upper primary,shared 75:25 between the Centre and states (90:10 for special category states). These ratios also applied to that Rs 1000 for cooks-cum-helpers,one allowed for schools up to 25 students,two for those between 26 and 100 students,and one more for each additional multiple of 100 students. Surely,one should ask an obvious question. If the issue is delivering cooked meals to children,why does the government have to get into the business of cooking? What is all this stuff about kitchen utensils,kitchen-cum-stores and cooks-cum-helpers?
If that cooking cost is paid (and states can and do chip in with additional cooking costs),surely NGOs will step in,perhaps spliced with CSR initiatives from the corporate sector,to meet any capital expenditure and gaps between actual costs and cooking costs. There can be centralised kitchens,which will be far more efficient in delivery and ensuring quality. (Quality monitoring is through gram sabhas,municipalities,education committees,parent-teacher associations and so on.) There is no need to presume there are market failures there. One needs to visit any of the centralised kitchens of Akshaya Patra (Karnataka,Delhi,Andhra) and Naandi Foundation (Andhra,Rajasthan,Madhya Pradesh,Orissa) to realise what centralised kitchens of MDMS can become,and no,these experiments are not restricted to urban areas. Essentially,these are three-way partnerships between governments (cooking and transport cost,provision of food-grain,land contribution),corporate sector (capital expenditure,additional subsidy) and NGOs (personnel,management,transportation). So why arent they replicated much more? Primarily because government is fixated on the other objective beyond enrollment,nutrition and breaking down caste barriers local employment,particularly of women,though these PPPs also provide incremental local employment.
Consequently,the HRD ministrys annual report states,The guidelines provide that,as far as possible,the responsibility of cooking/ supply of cooked midday meal should be assigned to local womens/ mothers self-help group or local youth club affiliated to the Nehru Yuvak Kendras or a voluntary organisation or by personnel engaged directly by the VEC/SMDC/PTA/ gram panchayat/ municipality. Involvement of self-help groups under the scheme is increasing gradually. Who said efficient delivery of mid-day meals to children was the sole objective?
The writer is a Delhi-based economist
express@expressindia.com
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