An appetite to serve

April 24, 2015 09:01 pm | Updated 09:01 pm IST

Lunch being served to the students at K.A.P. Viswanatham Primary School in Tiruchi. Photo: A. Muralitharan

Lunch being served to the students at K.A.P. Viswanatham Primary School in Tiruchi. Photo: A. Muralitharan

Packing a lunch-box for their school-going children is a daily ritual for mums and (occasionally) dads the world over.

And yet, there are children in our midst for whom a nutritionally balanced meal is a luxury.

India ranked 55th on the Global Hunger Index last year. The country also has the world’s largest public feeding system, reportedly serving 1.2 million children in over 1,265,000 schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres. It may be recalled that the Midday Meal Scheme was premiered by Tamil Nadu’s former chief minister K. Kamaraj in 1962 to encourage children from poor and rural backgrounds to attend school, and improved by succeeding governments before it became a federal initiative.

These facts were thrown into relief last week when the Tamil Nadu Nutritious Noon Meals Workers Association went on strike to protest wage-related grievances. The protests were called off on April 20 when the State authorities offered to redress the problems in a phased manner.

The scheme has often been in the news for the wrong reasons – for theft of ingredient stocks, mass food poisoning due to contaminated materials, and caste discrimination in the serving of meals.

Food and school

Under the scheme, every school kitchen is meant to be staffed by a meal organiser, a cook and an assistant cook-cum-helper. Most of them are women. Cooks earn between Rs. 1,380-3,800, while the assistant cooks get Rs. 950-2,000. The workers get one day off every month.

After the first round of talks this week, those who have put in 10-20 years of service will get a salary raise of 3% (approximately Rs. 300-400 per month).

There are 1,554 noon meal scheme centres in Tiruchi, which employ 3,199 workers to serve a little under a lakh and a half children. Over the duration of the strikes, the State government had employed representatives of local bodies, panchayats and self-help groups to ensure the uninterrupted supply of meals.

Despite espousing their union’s cause, several catering teams decided to keep working because they didn’t want the children to starve. We met one such team of a government-aided school in the city.

The three women staff in charge of serving 170 children as part of the Nutritious Noon Meals Scheme in K.A.P. Viswanatham Primary School, are winding up their work as it draws closer to lunchtime (12.40 p.m.). Tamilarasi, the organiser, Vasanthi, the cook and Radhika, the helper-cum-assistant cook, have been toiling in the humid weather to prepare the day’s menu: a pulao made with soya chunks with an accompaniment of boiled eggs sautéed in a spicy onion mixture.

“We are allotted 400 kg of rice per month and cook 17 kg of rice per day. Nothing gets wasted,” says Tamilarasi, as Vasanthi and Radhika take turns to check the cauldrons set on firewood-fuelled earthen stoves.

The diet chart specified by the government has an alternating bi-weekly menu that includes vegetable biryani, sambar rice, puliyogare, lemon saadam, and boiled egg side-dishes served five times a week.

Kailarasi has been in the field for the past 32 years. Like many of her colleagues, she is in charge of organising the meal preparation in more than one school. So once the ingredients have been set out for the K.A.P. Viswanatham Primary School, Tamilarasi walks down the road to the Subbiah Middle School to repeat the process there. “I’ve been asked to take care of two schools by the association because there’s a labour shortage. It’s tough, but we are managing somehow,” she says.

The team has gone back to cooking with firewood after the government stopped issuing gas cylinder refills for the stoves. “Many of us get breathing problems or lose our sight due to the smoke exposure,” says Tamilarasi. “But we’d rather not stop working.”

Each step of the process, from the number of meals to be prepared (based on attendance figures) to safety and hygiene is monitored regularly by school and government officials.

Need for nutrition

The students of the 61-year-old Thillai Nagar school are drawn from economically disadvantaged areas of the city: Gandhipuram, Thookumedai, Rahmaniyapuram and Moovendar Nagar, among others. “Our reputation for academic excellence and assured admission into the higher secondary school has made us popular simply by word-of-mouth,” says the headmistress Mrs. Jegadambal. “Since we have so many needy children on our rolls, our management has been providing free breakfast gruel (kanji) for the past 10-15 years,” she adds. As of now, there are 601 students on its rolls.

Vasanthi is engaged separately by the school for the breakfast preparation, and ingredients for the same are also provided separately.

The noon meals are served after the headmistress or teachers taste them first, but the children are not permitted to take the food home. The list of students eligible for the meals is prepared by the government authorities.

“Many parents admit their children here because of the food,” admits Mrs. Jegadambal. “But education is the only way ahead for children from dysfunctional and poor families. If you don’t offer nutritious food, they may simply drop out of the system, and get into trouble.”

“There’s no real profit in this job as the prices of essential commodities have gone up over the years,” says Tamilarasi. “But the pleasure of seeing the children enjoying their food makes it all worthwhile.”

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