Food shortage hits mid-day meal plan

Two of the world’s biggest children’s food programmes the Mid-Day Meal scheme and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) are facing a food crunch, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 27, 2008, 01:04:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Two of the world’s biggest children’s food programmes — the Mid-Day Meal scheme and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) — are facing a food crunch. Reason: a new distribution system adopted by the Food Ministry from this financial year.

According to the new system, allocation of foodgrain quota will take place every three months. Till last year, states were allowed to lift their annual allocations of wheat and rice round the year. Now, inability to lift grains within the stipulated period means the quota will lapse.

Sudharshan Pant, commissioner for the Mid-Day Meal scheme in Rajasthan, has told the Centre the state lost 52,000 metric tonnes of foodgrains in the last three months. The reason given was the new distribution system. While Uttar Pradesh authorities said it was unable to lift about 60,000 metric tones, Karnataka also reported a huge loss. In Bihar, over 40,000 metric tonnes could not be lifted due to floods, state education department officials told HT.

Of the total 29 lakh metric tonnes of wheat and rice allocated to the HRD Ministry for providing mid-day meals to 11.74 crore children in 2008-09, the state governments lifted only 32 per cent in the first six months.

Similarly, the Women and Child Development Ministry — which runs the Rs 5,000-crore ICDS to feed children below three years in 10.53 anganwadis — has been able to utilise only about 31 per cent of its annual quota of 5.40 lakh metric tones. “The Food Ministry has stipulated such a bureaucratic method that it allows us only five to 10 days to lift our entire quota of food,” a Bihar official said. “We have sought immediate revision of the guidelines and a coordination committee to prevent food shortage for essential child nutrition programmes,” said a WCD Ministry official.

The Food Ministry refused to accept the blame and instead accused the states, saying they provided details of foodgrain requirement only at the last moment, causing delay in issuing release orders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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