-The Telegraph Nearly 10 crore children have the midday meal in 11 lakh schools every working day New Delhi: The Centre has allowed privately managed centralised kitchens to be engaged to serve food to schoolchildren in rural areas under its midday meal scheme — a decision it had earlier announced in May 2017 only to roll back in April this year — raising fears of loss of jobs for thousands of cooks. Trade...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar has reportedly struck down a proposal to increase from a paltry Rs 1,000 a month the honorarium for cooks-cum-helpers preparing midday meals. A cabinet note moved recently seeking extension of the scheme for three years from 2017 is silent on any increase in the wage of the 25 lakh workers, most of whom are single women or widows. A note prepared by officials...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre is considering doubling the monthly pay of the country's 25 lakh midday meal cook-cum-helpers to Rs 2,000, but the unions say the proposed raise is too little. The cooks' current pay of Rs 1,000 - a fraction of the official minimum wages - has been static since 2009, with successive governments keeping a proposed hike pending for the past five years. Now, a year before the general...

-Hind Kisan In the hill state, only 16 percent of the cooks working under the school meal programme are Dalits. This is an appalling figure in a state where they make one-fourth of the population. Caste is a stronger divider in this picturesque Himachali village of Saraha than the river which cuts across dividing it into two halves. The west bank hosts mostly Dalit houses and the upper castes have occupied...

-Hindustan Times The human resource development ministry describes the self-help groups and cook-cum-helpers as pillars of the programme. New Delhi: The human resource development (HRD) ministry has asked states to get all midday meal cooks-cum-helpers trained by “master trainers” by the end of this year. In a letter sent to heads of state education departments, the ministry has suggested they can get the cook-cum-helpers in their jurisdiction trained by master chefs of the...