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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The Egg Debate Boils Over -- Will Governments Stop Playing With Children's Food? -Swati Narayan

The Egg Debate Boils Over -- Will Governments Stop Playing With Children's Food? -Swati Narayan

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published Published on Feb 22, 2019   modified Modified on Feb 22, 2019
-TheWire.in

With the 2019 elections around the corner, political parties should step up to the plate and display their commitment to children’s nutrition.

This week, the prime minister made headlines by serving midday meals supplied by  Akshaya Patra at a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Vrindavan.

While he engaged in banter with the children about being late, one of the students wittily interjected that she didn’t mind as she had already eaten at home.

While the child’s innocent reply divulges the current government’s penchant for staged photo ops, it conceals the gritty ground realities across India. Even in a prosperous state like Punjab, the HRD ministry’s own survey reveals that 40% of children go to school on an empty stomach.

Uttar Pradesh, in fact, has the second highest rate of child malnourishment in the country and nearly half the children are stunted.

Eggs, a nutrition-dense superfoods, are recognised by nutritionists as ideal for growing and undernourished children.

Then why did the prime minister not serve these children eggs?

Food politics

First, this reflects a nationwide trend in an era of strident food politics. Eleven of 15 BJP-ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh, refuse to provide eggs to children in schools. Influenced by saffronised vegetarian lobbies, four years ago, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan too had banned eggs in anganwadis despite high malnutrition.

In Jharkhand, one of the few tribal-dominated BJP-ruled states to serve eggs, last month in an unusual open-air picnic cabinet meeting, the chief minister, without any consultations, decided to reduce the number of eggs from three to two per week.

Please click here to read more.

TheWire.in, 17 February, 2019, https://thewire.in/rights/eggs-midday-meals-bjp-eggetarian-india


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