World's biggest meal scheme may be extended up to secondary level but the poor enrolled in private schools will not get government sponsored food owning to distinction it will create. Chetan Chauhan reports.
World's biggest meal scheme may be extended up to secondary level but the poor enrolled in private schools will not get government sponsored food owning to distinction it will create.
Over 12 crore children up to upper primary level in 12.65 lakh schools across India are entitled to get hot cooked meal once a day, a probable reason for over 10% jump in enrolment in schools in less than a decade.
The success has pushed HRD ministry led by Kapil Sibal to seek funds from the Planning Commission to expand the programme to the secondary level in a bid to retain students.
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"We expect the expansion in the 12th five year plan," Sibal said.
The idea is to reduce drop-out rate of children from upper primary to secondary level while improving the nutritional value. Less than 50% of children taking admission in upper primary level enroll for secondary level.
Various studies have shown that food is an incentive for many parents to send their children to schools.
"But the quality is food in many states is still a problem," a ministry official said.
The annual midday meal budget is about Rs 10,380 crore and the HRD ministry estimates an additional burden of about Rs 2,000 crore for the expansion. For every child in upper primary level, the ministry provides Rs 3.75 plus the cost for bringing food grains to the school.
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The ministry has, however, ruled out providing midday meal in private schools where 25% of admissions are reserved for children from economically weaker sections (EWS) saying it will create a “class distinction”.
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The ministry has, however, ruled out providing midday meal in private schools where 25% of admissions are reserved for children from economically weaker sections (EWS) saying it will create a “class distinction”.
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.
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