Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s decision to finally increase the rates of mid-day meals is welcome and will go a long way in resolving a host of issues that are affecting the scheme. Sawant has agreed to increase the price by Rs 1.90 per meal as demanded by Self-Help Groups but has added a rider that there should be no compromises on the quality of food. The payout will be now Rs 8 per meal for the primary level and Rs 10 for the upper primary.
The point on food quality is valid, but the argument raised is debatable. The point that there can’t be any compromises on food supplies for students, in a way, exposes the plight of a system that was allowed a free run. If the food was below standard, why was it allowed in the first place? The CM was quoted as saying that when he had a mid-day meal in one of the schools he visited some months back, he found the food to be not up to the mark. The question is, why were there no strictures passed on to the supplier, and an alarm raised?
Under the current system, there are designated officials entrusted with quality checks before the food is consumed by students. That means there is a collective failure. Those entrusted with the food checks must be taken to task, not the SGH alone. Students not consuming the mid-day meals or food getting wasted are indicators to understand that something is going wrong. Officials from the education department should have been engaged in random checks, and there has to be periodic stock-taking and review.
If the pricing of food and quality is one side of the issue, the payout is another. The Education Department has attributed the delay in payments to the change in payment gateway since it had to switch the Public Financial Management System portal. The hurdles in transition may have caused a hindrance, but at the end of the day, a 5-6 month delay in payment is unacceptable. It is for the Education Department to take up the issue with the government rather than keeping suppliers, some of whom are working in tight financial conditions, gasping for funds to the extent that they were even ready to stop the supplies.
From the poor quality of food, checks and reviews to payments, the mid-day meal scheme has still not fallen in place even after 13-odd years of its existence. It appears that the pertinent issue of food quality hasn’t been resolved yet. Let’s not forget the days when lizards and insects were found in food. We now have complaints of supplies being of poor quality.
It is time to revisit certain sections of the scheme and put in place a robust mechanism so that quality food is dished out to students. Otherwise, the vicious cycle will continue and even a decade later the same old issues will continue to haunt us. Let’s not make a mockery of a scheme which is considered intrinsic to the growth and welfare of students.
