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Under privileged children depend on erratic Mid-day meals at school for daily food in Budgam.
Budgam schools have an erratic mid-day meal implementation. The village in Budgam depend heavily on agriculture which is repeatedly failing due to adverse weather conditions. That’s why sometimes Mid-day meals are the only meals that these children eat in a day.
"She faints almost every afternoon in the class," says Nisar Ahmad, English and Mathematics teacher at Government Middle School, Lakhripora, in Central Kashmir's Budgam district. For weeks together her diagnosis and that of other students with the same mysterious symptoms eluded the school authorities until finally one day when she asked the teacher in a meek voice whether he had any information about the distribution of rice at Ration Ghat in the village.
Believe it or not, Ishrat Jan, all of 10, and a student from class V hadn’t eaten since 3 days, as the family had no rice to cook, Ahmad was told by this girl. "I was shocked after listening to these words," he said, adding, her family's financial condition was very bad, which was why they could not afford 2 square meals a day.
"4 children of the family are enrolled in the school and all of them are very weak with pale faces because of insufficient food, which has affected their health and growth, and they hardly remain focused in the class," he said.
"It is unbearable to live without food in the class for the whole day, but we have to bear it at times," Saher, a 4th standard student said.
Their family is dependent on agriculture and manual labour with its head only bread earner.
This tiny Budgam village with around 275 households ekes out a living by toiling the land with rugged terrain, a meagre output and little access to basic services. 36 villages depend on a single irrigation canal, and as luck would have it this village is the last one – as a result, it hardly gets water to irrigate their fields on time, because of which the agriculture has a poor yield. Successive poor harvests have eaten into their household food stocks and the family’s nutrition status. These subsistence farmers have "literally' learnt to live with hunger.
Seeing the condition of these children and plight of their families, Ahmad many a times instructs the school cook to serve more rice to ensure that these "marginalized" children get more to eat.
Arshid Hussain, another teacher, adds that one in eight students are unable to gain regular access to enough food to be able to study, grow, ward off disease, and otherwise live healthy lives.
At the global level, India has made concerted efforts to expand and strengthen its national flagship programs on nutrition, early learning, and health through the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS) and the National Health Mission (NHM) to meet the basic requirements of young population. But the Global Nutrition Report 2016 on global and country-level nutrition mentioned in its latest report that the challenge remains high, especially in India’s poorest states. World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim also said that India's malnutrition is still high.
Schemes and programs including Anganwadi centers and Mid Day Meal scheme have reached the state but due to the lackadaisical approach of the successive government and administrative hiccups, these schemes couldn't be properly implemented because of which the marginalized sections is bearing the brunt today.
Even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its report has pointed out that the Mid-day meal scheme has not been implemented properly. The CAG revelation questions the department's ability to provide proper nutrition to the deserving children enrolled in government schools.
The CAG report also indicated that there is lack of coordination between the hierarchy of the department and those working on the ground. Despite being a serious issue, the government does not have proper data on malnutrition in children in the district.
Deputy Commissioner Budgam, Mir Altaf Ahmad said that the administration has taken major steps to ensure proper delivery and implementation of people friendly schemes. "The district administration has been tasked to prepare a detailed report, once the concerned officials submit their findings, quick action will be taken to fill the loopholes in the system," Ahmad said.
Images used for representational purposes only