Soon, a change of menu for mid-day meals

The central government is working on a plan to replace mid-day meals with something that takes less effort to prepare but provides the same nutrition to children. The idea is to take teachers away from meal duties and make them dedicate more time to teaching instead.

Rice, dal or porridge is the usual fare given to children for mid-day meals in government schools. In states where the scheme is well-managed, the meals are prepared and distributed either by peons or by an outsourced agency. However, in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, school teachers themselves prepare and distribute the meals at a time when they should be teaching.

In order to fix this problem, the School Education Department of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has asked for suggestions from states on what they can replace the usual meals with.

According to sources in the ministry, Minister of State for School Education Upendra Kushwaha had recently noticed this problem during his visit to schools in Bihar and had asked for suggestions from all the states to find an alternative to the meals.

"We want to take teachers away from mid-day meal duties. In many schools in Bihar and UP, teachers are preparing food themselves, and managing the logistics for buying raw material and other things to manage the scheme as they do not have enough staff to do it. This wastes a lot of their time and they are not able to give that time for teaching. This is one of the reasons that the education standard in some villages in these states is so poor. The idea is to change this by making changes in the mid-day meal scheme," said a source in the ministry.

"Some states have given their suggestions. We are awaiting more suggestions to see how the idea can take shape. Some people have suggested things like milk and fruits and vitamin tablets for nutrition," he added.

The central government has fixed the nutritional value for meal served to students at primary and upper primary levels. For primary level, the value is fixed at 450 Calories and 12 gram of protein. The value is higher for upper primary levels.

...& ANALYSIS

• The plan to change the menu of mid-day meals is a sound one since it is counter-productive for teachers to spend time on preparing them.
   
• But it must be ensured that the new menu provides the right amount of nutrition.