How Closed School and No Mid Day Meal Scheme has devasted life of children in Bihar?

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MID DAY MEAL

The Mid-day Meal Scheme is a school meal programme of the Government of India designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide.
The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in government, government aided, local body etc.
Serving 120,000,000 children in over 1,265,000 schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, it is the largest of its kind in the world

According to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, 48.3 per cent children (below 5 years) were classified as “stunted” and 43.9 per cent as “underweight” in Bihar, much above the national average of 38.4 and 35.7 per cent.
Gains have been made, with these percentages at 55.6 and 55.9 in 2005-06. But over the past three months, one of the primary weapons in the fight against malnutrition has stopped: mid-day meals in school.

Faces of 15 children, who live in a village in Bihar stare at you from a photograph taken by Dipankar Ghose which appeared in this newspaper on July 7.
The picture accompanies a report (“School shut, no mid-day meal, children in Bihar village back to work selling scrap”).
One is the meaning of democracy. Though philosophical, it is a relevant point because Bihar is currently in election mode.

The menu included rice, roti, vegetables, dal, soya and, of course, Friday eggs. This backbone of nutrition has disappeared.
Two of the 15 children have hair that an older person has tried to sort out. The hair of all the others is dry, sparse and has that shade of light brown we recognise as a sign of serious nutritional deficiency. At least six children in the photograph have the stare that speaks of hunger.

These are children in whose life eating is no longer a daily activity. They go hungry so often that they don’t expect to be fed anytime soon. Their expression reveals that. Their large eyes are without expectation.
However, if you look at the action taken, you figure out how poorly children’s needs are understood. The delayed order that has now been issued is about money and dry ration.

The money will go to the bank accounts of these children or their parents, and they will be able to collect some rice from the school shortly.
This fantasy promises to deliver the children’s right to education through the online medium. The curriculum compressed tightly into short modules, with 30 per cent segments deleted, will cover whatever the child requires for a regime of outcome testing and final exam.

Annual surveys, and those who conduct them, have been crying aloud that the public system of teaching is not effective.
The digital age will be no different. The 15 children of Bihar whose parents will now get rice and money to feed them will soon learn the magic of rote learning when they hit the truncated Grade I online syllabus.

Hours after The Indian Express published a report highlighting the plight of children from a Mahadalit village in Bhagalpur in the absence of mid-day meals due to the shutdown of schools, the Bihar government issued a statewide order to distribute ration to school children for three months and transfer money to their bank accounts, or to that of their guardians, in lieu of the food scheme.

The order was issued even as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took suo motu cognizance.
In the order, Bihar Additional Chief Secretary (Education) R K Mahajan referred to the Covid shutdown and wrote: “In this situation, under the Food Security Act, for 24 working days in May, 30 days of summer vacation in June, and 26 working days in July (a total of 80 days), food will be given in fixed quantity to children and replacement cash amounts will be given by DBT into their accounts.”

The order states that children in classes 1-5 will get 8 kg of ration and Rs 358 via DBT, calculated on a daily rate of 100g and Rs 4.48 for 80 days. Students of class 6-8 will get 12 kg of ration and Rs 536, based on a daily rate of 150g and Rs 6.71 for 80 days, it states.
According to the Economic Survey 2019, there are 115 lakh children between class 1 and 8 who avail of the mid-day meal scheme in Bihar.
Earlier, referring to The Indian Express report, the NHRC said notices have been issued to the Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Union HRD Ministry, and Chief Secretary of Bihar.