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Egg-less meals at anganwadis? Madhya Pradesh's ban pitches nutrition against politics -Rohini Mohan

-The Economic Times

The photo accompanying this article was taken in 2013 by Sumitra, an anganwadi worker in Bangalore. It was what the children lovingly called "egg day", one of the three times a week they are served boiled eggs. "Attendance soars on egg days," says Sumitra.

When the picture was taken, anganwadis in Karnataka had just started providing eggs following the tragic news of a six-year-old girl in Bangalore who died of pneumonia, intensified by severe malnourishment. While a state directive still exists, anganwadi workers say the extra funds for eggs rarely come. The staff has often paid for the eggs from their own meagre salary. "I'm not sure how much longer egg days will last," says a worker who didn't want to be named.

The debate around eggs in the school feeding programme has resurfaced this week, as the Madhya Pradesh government banned eggs in anganwadis.52% of children in the state are malnourished, but the only explanation for the ban is that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is a "strict vegetarian" and eggs are a "sentimental issue" for him. With this, MP joins several states that have knocked eggs off their school feeding programme. India has 194.6 million undernourished people, the highest number in the world, up by 2.6% in the last five years. More than 65 million children are stunted, especially those from Dalit and tribal and below poverty line families.Governments spend tens of thousands of crores to tackle this, with patchy results. Implementation hurdles exist, but the egg debate is symbolic of another dilemma: the conflict between the science and politics of nutrition in India.

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