Despite talk of better implementation and bigger budgets, the ambitious Mid-Day Meal programme has yet to reach all the enrolled schoolchildren.
Nearly three crore children in the country go hungry as they are beyond the coverage of Mid-Day Meal programme till date and funds have remained unspent in this scheme. Only Rs 8,964 crore has been spent out of allocation of Rs 9,700 crore for the year 2016-17. Out of total enrolment of 13.2 crore children, only 10.3 crore are getting benefit under Mid-Day Meal scheme, as per data provided by State Governments to Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Interestingly, the number of enrolment of schoolchildren has also come down from 14.69 crore in 2009-10 to 13.3 crore in 2016-17. “This indicates that the strategy of the scheme to lure children to primary education by ensuring food is not working properly,” said a senior officer, adding a special drive will soon be carried out to check these numbers.
When asked why three crore children are beyond coverage of this scheme, Arjun Nath Dasa, of NGO Akshay Patra said that in many hilly and tough terrain this scheme has not yet fully reached. “The authorities should carry out inspection and find out reasons why these children have been deprived of the benefit of the scheme,” said Nath. Nath’s NGO Akshay Patra provides Mid-Day Meal to 16 lakh children in the country.
Mid-Day Meal is a flagship Central Government scheme that aims to provide nutritional food to students in Government schools, special training centres and Madrasas supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. The Central and State Governments share the financial burden in the 60:40 ratio except that it is 90:10 for eight North-Eastern States and three Himalayan States-Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir. The Mid-Day Meal programme has been allocated Rs 10,000 crore in the 2017-18 Union Budget, as compared to Rs 9,700 crore for the year 2016-17.
According to sources, to provide mid day meal to 10.30 crore children, 25.5 lakh cook-cum-helper have been engaged. “In some States, the students to cook ratio is very high whereas the guidelines prescribed for engaging one cook-cum-helper for schools up to 25 students, two for schools with 26 to 100 students, and one additional helper for every addition of up to 100 students. In Kerala, the ratio is high at 183 per students per cook cum helper,” sources said.
Besides, Kerala also gives an additional amount of Rs 6,500 per cook-cum-helper as honorarium above the minimum mandatory amount of Rs 1,000 per cook-cum-helper. Puducherry is the only State, which gives Rs 13,000 per cook-cum-helper, highest in the country. Interestingly, except Kerala and Puducherry, other States and UTs are not interested in increasing the honourarium amount for cook-cum-helper.
Sources said only 7,96,316 kitchen-cum-Stores have been constructed till October 2016 out of total sanctioned 10,05,477 Kitchen-cum-stores. In other words, only 79 per cent target has been achieved till date. Interestingly, in States like Andhra Pradesh and Manipur, the number of kitchen-cum-stores have decreased while Goa, Delhi, lakshadweep did not have any infrastructure development. On the other hand, number of kitchen-cum-stores have increased in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
According to data, total 314 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are engaged by 17 States and UTs in 127 districts for providing Mid Day Meal to 72,19,889 children studying in 42,383 schools. For instance, Delhi has engaged 44 NGOs for Mid Day Meal programme while West Bengal has engaged 60. In UP, 112 NGOs are involved in the programme.
A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development headed by Dr Satyanarayan Jatiya has expressed annoyance over the poor spending by the States and Union Territories. “The Committee cannot agree with the logic that the since the child population in the North Eastern Region is only six per cent of the total population, the 10 per cent funds allocated for the region could not be spent,” Jatiya said in his report.