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States have failed to tap full potential of school midday meal scheme and maximize welfare -Pyaralal Raghavan
-The Times of India

A recent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG ) report on the midday meal scheme highlights the major achievements and short falls in its implementation. Dubbed as the largest such scheme attempted anywhere in the world the midday meal scheme stands out for its inclusive approach, being available to each and every child up to the secondary school level, and its direct impact on improving nutrition levels and school enrolment,both of which has implications on tapping the human resource potential and accelerating long term growth of the economy.

A major drawback of the midday meal scheme, which has now been in existence for around two decades, is that it has failed to grow and evolve beyond the basic objective of providing minimum levels of nutrition. The two performance analysis done by CAG so far indicates that many of the major shortfalls persist and that the states have not attempted to build on the achievements and improve on the quality and nutrition levels of the meals provided and develop it into a major welfare program that ensures improvement in both education and health faculties of the young.

Consequently the quality of the food served in the schools leaves much to be deserved. Enrolment levels declared are often exaggerated; there are leakages of food grains, inadequate monitoring and evidence of poor financial discipline. The most recent CAG audit even points out that enrolment in public schools providing midday meals have declined by more than a third in recent years while that of the private schools that serve no midday meals have gone up marginally by around 5%.

But this may have to do more with the improvement in income levels of the people and the growing demand for quality education, especially English education which the government owned schools neglect to provide in the name of protecting regional languages. Similarly the poor implementation of the scheme highlights the inadequate and deteriorating governance capacities in the states and the lack of adequate enthusiasm and commitment for taking up causes of the disadvantaged segments of the society.

The biggest drawback of the midday meal scheme, which also highlights it continued neglect in the scheme by most states, is the poor monitoring and inadequate inspection which allows for leakages and neglect of the quality aspect and nutritional value of the food served. Though the scheme is also saddled with poor infrastructure facilities like clean kitchens and protected water supplies the efforts made to tackle the situation has been far from adequate.

In fact the CAG audit shows that the funds for monitoring and inspections remain unutilized in many states and that the educational officers at the district and lower levels have not provided the minimum attention that such a massive program should have received. The other aspect that highlights the lack of commitment towards the midday school scheme is the states inability to set up grievance redress mechanisms to ensure regular feedback of the children and officials implementing the scheme which would ensure quick remedial measures.

The other major problem of the scheme has been the disproportionate large time its claims from the school teachers who are to provide for the logistics and the day to day delivery. This is neglect of basic health checkups of the children on a regular basis to monitor the impact of the scheme.

Consequently the coverage of the midday meal scheme in the recent years have hovered around three fourth of the total children in the primary and upper primary schools. While Kerala has achieved 100% coverage other states like Assam, Goa, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir has ensured more than 90% coverage. However, many states have lagged behind. These include states like Jharkhand (54%), Bihar (68%) and Uttar Pradesh (55%) where more than two third of the students are yet to be covered. And many states fail to utilize the food grains allocated by the central government. That is a tragedy that these poorer states could have avoided with some minimal efforts.