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Food and Nutrition Security/ Mid Day Meal Scheme/ ICDS/ PDS | Sustaining the Amma Unavagams (The Hindu)

Sustaining the Amma Unavagams (The Hindu)

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published Published on Feb 11, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 11, 2018
-The Hindu

Five years after the first canteen came up, the future of the pet project of the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa hangs in balance due to reports of fall in patronage and mounting losses borne by civic bodies. Budgetary support and operational reforms may be necessary for a course correction

Sekar. D was observing this newspaper’s team of reporters as he sat cross-legged on the tiled floor. Then, he abandoned his dinner — chappathis stacked on a steel plate — walked up to us, and joined his palms together. “Please don’t close this canteen. I don’t have any other way to feed myself,” he said. Mr. Sekar had mistaken the reporters for a government review team.

The Amma Unavagam on Seniamman Koil Street in north Chennai's Tondiarpet is critical to Mr. Sekar, who is homeless. “I have all my meals here: Five idlis, sambhar and pongal for ?10; two kinds of rice for another ?10; and eight chappathis and dal for ?12,” he said.

Tondiarpet falls within the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency, which sent former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to the Assembly in 2015 and 2016. There is affection for her here. “She ensured my well-being before she died,” said Mr. Sekar. Nearby, at the canteen in Corporation ward 42 on Ellayamuthali Street, a freshly-plucked marigold sat atop the section of the menu card on which the late Chief Minister’s photo was printed.

P. Muthusamy, a watchman at a house in Tiruchi’s Thillai Nagar, has been visiting the Amma Unavagam at Thennur almost daily since it opened in June 2013. “Amma Unavagams continue to serve people like us even after the death of Jayalalithaa. Had she been alive, she would have taken steps to start more Unavagams and introduced a few more popular dishes,” he said.

It has been five years since the Amma Unavagam project was initiated. The canteen that former Chennai Mayor Saidai Duraisamy started on Pookara Street in Saidapet in 2006 provided the model. It was Jayalalithaa’s grand plan, comparable in vision to the noon meals scheme of her predecessor in the AIADMK, M. G. Ramachandran. Over the years, the number of canteens increased, making them a crucial mechanism of offering subsidised food to the masses. “The secret of the success of Amma Canteen was the vision and leadership of Jayalalithaa. When bureaucrats were reluctant, she accepted the proposal put forth by the Chennai Corporation. Such a welfare measure is not even found in Cuba or China. So, we have to sustain it,” said Mr. Duraisamy.

Along with the expansion, negatives have surfaced too. Some of the canteens suffer from poor patronage today. The cost of running the heavily subsidised system was pushed to civic bodies, further straining their finances and raising questions over their sustainability. As officials have sought to plug leakages and rationalise the operations, complaints have emerged of mismanagement.

Many experts say that while local bodies can manage the canteens, the government will have to provide budgetary support so they thrive. The concept of using self-help groups (SHGs) to operate the canteens is a good idea but has to be expanded and the groups should be effectively handled, they say.

Bleeding civic bodies

Those who are part of the Amma Unavagam ecosystem know that a crisis is looming.

On January 8, the Chennai Corporation collected ?8.62 lakh in sales from its 407 canteens. “The average sales per day was more than ?15 lakh a few years ago,” said Mr. Duraisamy. Officials say the Corporation has sold 48.15 crore idlis, 17.33 crore plates of variety rice and 21.61 crore chappathis in the past five years.

Rumours seem to have fuelled the decline in patronage. “Sales have dropped to just ?1,100 per day. Employees and residents are scared that the canteen may be shifted to some other locality,” said a member of the SHG that runs a canteen in Kodambakkam.

Madurai Corporation’s Revenue Department officials say that of their 12 canteens, only six touched the collection target of ?3,600 a day in 2017. Others fell short by at least ?1,000 each day. While all the canteens in the city put together made around ?1.3 crore in 2015, sales plunged to ?1.25 crore in 2016. It dipped by several lakhs in 2017. “We incur a loss of at least ?35 lakh each month. Apart from the regular purchase of rice, pulses, vegetables, and curd, we pay ?7,000 for maintenance per day,” he says.

The 10 canteens run by the Tirunelveli Corporation sell 3.6 lakh idlis, 87,000 plates of curd rice and 90,000 plates of sambhar rice every month. The Corporation spends ?24.06 lakh for preparing and serving the food monthly while the revenue hovers at just over ?10 lakh. “We are already in the red and are incurring a loss of ?14 lakh every month and over ?1.68 crore a year by running the Amma Canteens,” said an official.

The 12 canteens operated by the Coimbatore Corporation serve over 2,500 and over 1,500 customers a day for breakfast and lunch respectively. Corporation sources said the civic body lost ?15.77 lakh over Amma Unavagams in 2016-17. In 2012-13, the loss was ?11.65 lakh.

The Tiruchi Corporation spends about ?1.1 lakh daily from its general fund to run its 11 canteens but gets a revenue of just ?30,000 a day. “The cost of vegetables, oil, coconut, milk and fuel has almost doubled since the introduction of the scheme,” said a senior official.

New patrons

At the canteen of Chennai’s ward 53, located in the industrial area of Old Washermanpet, in-charge P. Susheela readily admits that sales have been slow. So slow that daily shifts have been reduced from three to two. The Thanganatchithiram SHG has been operating the canteen since April 2013. They began with 13 members; there are 11 now.

“During 2013-15, we sold meals worth ?4,500-5,000 each day. The amount hovers at around ?1,000-2,000 now,” she said. Staff had to come in as early as 3 a.m. in the initial years to begin working on the idli batter. 5 a.m. suffices these days.

There is no panic, though. Members pointed out that three other canteens have opened in the vicinity since, taking away patrons. “The last — 53(a) — was started near the new bus stand to accommodate the heavy demand. They don’t have a kitchen, so we cook and deliver,” said D. Nithya. They retain patrons from the densely-populated neighbourhood and have even gained new ones — Hindi-speaking workers of a nearby biscuit factory.

It is not that there are no problems. Ms. Susheela withdraws when the topic comes up, leaving Ms. Nithya to take over. The latter signals at the smoke in the kitchen and points to the still exhaust fan. “We keep complaining, but no one comes to repair that. The water pump too, is not working any more,” she said. The SHG members say they were berated by Corporation officials after a Tamil newspaper recently reported on such infrastructural problems. Then, last week, two of the staff were asked to leave.

The women are paid ?300 for a day’s work. They report for either the 5 a.m. - 1 p.m. or the 1 p.m. - 9 p.m. shift. “I intend to complain about this to Corporation officials at the zonal office tomorrow,” said Ms. Nithya.

Operating through SHGs

SHG members in Chennai claim the zonal health officials make hasty decisions that weaken their leaders who play a key role in organising women.

“We formed the groups and motivated them for the welfare scheme. Our leadership is weakening now. So, we are unable to motivate the team of workers in the canteen,” says an organiser of SHGs in Chennai.

“A team of women drawing a very small salary of ?9,000 per month can be motivated only by keeping the team intact. Bureaucrats do not understand this aspect. They just transfer employees to another canteen. New employees prove a misfit, increasing attrition,” said another SHG member of an Amma Canteen in Chennai.

Many employees in Chennai claimed that the Corporation Health Department officials were not providing essential items for the normal functioning of the canteens. However, officials, who admitted to a reduction of sales by 35-45% in many canteens, said a few decisions were made “only to reduce pilferage by employees.”

A senior official of the Madurai Corporation’s Health Department said that some low-performing centres suffer from poor access.

There have been suggestions that the Corporation shift some canteens to more prominent locations, such as the Mattuthavani bus stand or the railway station.

Yet, many officials stress the importance of the Amma Unavagam project. Madurai Corporation Commissioner S. Aneesh Sekhar said the project continues to be a flagship initiative of the State government.

“All centres are continuing to generate demand. The poor continue to be hugely benefited by this,” he said.

Remedial measures

P. Kuganantham, former Chennai City Health Officer who was involved in the conceptualising of the scheme, suggested a few measures for course correction. “The quality [of food] has come down. From what I hear from those still in service, some centres in the periphery are not functioning at all,” he said.

“Our people are not prepared to believe in the capability of women from self-help groups. You have to make these SHGs independent. Further, the Unavagams cannot be a programme of the local bodies at all. They cannot afford to allocate their revenues to a scheme like this. If the Amma Unavagams were to raise prices, they will be able to run on their own without help from Corporations,” he added.

To involve the local community, Mr. Kuganantham suggested roping in unemployed but qualified women from the vicinity of the centres to help operate them on an honorary basis.

“In the non-food-serving time, these centres can sell groceries and vegetables. This will also increase the carry-home salary of the women working there.”

(With inputs from Aloysius Xavier Lopez and Deepu Sebastian Edmond in Chennai, Sanjana Ganesh in Madurai, P. Sudakar in Tirunelveli, Karthik Madhavan in Coimbatore, C. Jaishankar in Tiruchi, K. Raju in Dindigul, and Praveen Paul Joseph in Thoothukudi.)
 
The Hindu, 10 February, 2018, please click here to access

The Hindu, 10 February, 2018, http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/sustaining-the-amma-unavagams/article22717251.ece?homepage=true


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