CHILD RIGHTS COMMISIONS IN ALL STATES SHOULD CONTROL AND REGULATE THE MID DAY MEAL SCHEMES?

After the most tragic and outrageous deaths of three girls from age two to eight, all sisters, due to starvation in Delhi’s Mandavli area in trans Yamuna area in abject poverty, the father being a rickshaw puller n unemployed, though still missing till yet, has started a serious debate on the malnutrition deaths in various parts of the country.

After having been the incessant target of condemnation on account of these hunger deaths in the constituency of the deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and the parliamentary constituency of the BJP MP Mahesh Giri who talk so much to promote the prime minister’s Beti Bachao aur Beti Padao flagship programme, the Delhi government’s statutory Protection of Child Right’s Commission has tightened its belt to keep a vigilant eye on the quality and system of delievery of Mid day meals in various primary schools of the Municipal Corporations of various Zones and the Delhi government.

According to one of its members’ namely Ranjana Prasad the Delhi State Protection of Child Rights Commision that looks after the welfare and well being of the children in terms of their over all safety and security, the Commision will now onwards look after the entire arrangements of the fair distribution and the quality of the mid day meals that is supplied on daily basis in the schools of Delhi Municipal corporations and government schools under Delhi government.

At present there are about twelve hundreds schools of the Delhi government and One thousand seven hundred and fifty schools under the jurisdiction of the Delhi Municipal Corporation in its various Zones.
In all about 18 lac students are the beneficiaries of this union government’s mid day meal scheme.

Just a few months ago several children have fallen sick and had become unconcious, later on hospitalised after they had complained of repeated vommiting and acute pain in their andomen having gone unconcious finally. It was later on revealed that the food was infected with poison due to a lizard eyc having been mixed in the food items.

Such dreaded and fatal incidents had earlier occured in Mathura and Bihar as well where more than thirty children had died due to the food stuff having been cooked under extreme unhyginic conditions probably poisioned after the lizard, rats, worms etc having got cooked due the utter negligence and ignorance of the staff.

There had been several such incidents of under rated and adulterated food stuff being used in the preparation of mid day meals in order to siphon off the huge money by corrupt officials, allocated for these schemes by the governments.

It’s only after the incidents of children suffering from the low quality food stuff and allegedly finding of the dead lizard in the food that the Protection of Child Rights Commission of Delhi has finally come into action. Thanks to them.

It may be recalled that the Mid Day Meal Scheme was for the very first time, though on a low keel started in the sixties n seventies during the tenure of the chief ministership of K. Kamaraj, who once saw a boy with a buffalo in his home town and enquired if he is studying in the school or not. The boy said if we study in school how would his poor family survive. He being poor and eldest in the family have to share the responsibility of cow and buffalo grazing and to execute the agricultural works as well said the boy to Kamraj, the then CM.

Since then Kamaraj introduced the mid day meal scheme in Tamilnadu to ensure that the studies of the poor children should not suffer due to the lack of food. The scheme was later on promoted by MG Ramachandran which was later converted into free ration to the poors of Tamilnadu to be later on followed by J. Jaya lalitha, the popular chief minister of the South and one time actress of the Southern films.

In 1995 however the union government launched this scheme in a wider perspective with a whopping budget of 13000 crores in order to serve over ten crore children in over 12 crore schools of the country ranging from the students of class 1 to class 8th.

The scheme was primarily launched to promote and encourage more and more children to seek primary and middle level education with the protien and vitamins’ oriented free meals’ delievery on daily basis in almost all the primary and middle schools of the country.

This children welfare programme bears a tremendous potential to end chronic malnutrition and starvation which also encourages the poor and underprivileged families to send their wards to schools.

During 2003 and after, there have been quite a good number of incidents of unhyginic mid day meals deliveries with incidents of deaths of children due to the cooked food either being poisioned by the mixing of reptiles, rats or worms etc or for being adulterated or for being of low quality particularly in states like Bihar, UP and Delhi etc.

Even the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) have specifically pointed out the tremendous amount of deficiency in the schools of Punjab like using the contaminated water in cooking meals, no use of gloves and total violation of the prescribed norms. Despite the provision to hire staff, the children of the school were pressurised to wash utensils and so on n so forth.

About 80% of the children in the country between the ages of 7 to 14 have high rates of micronutrients deficiencies of iron, folic acid and vitamins. Therefore, the primary and the basic objective of the governments were to improve the health condition of children suffering from impairment of the cognitive development through the rich protien and iron oriented healthy mid day meals to the children of 12 crore schools in the country.

The states where maximum attention is required for upkeeping and improving the poor health of malnourished children in the country are Orissa, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Rajasthan, UP n Delhi and the government should imitate the example of Delhi by instructing its respective Child rights Protection Commissions to take over the charge of the free, fair and transparent high quality mid day meals delivery in all the schools of various states of the country.

Reports say that 20 million children are under nourished in India and 60% mothers are anemic due the lack of rich protien diets where as 59 million tonnes of food frains is rotting in government godowns says noble laureate Amartya Sen.

What’s your take friend?