Education, Careers & Professional News
India’s Free-School-Lunch Program Allows Girl To Taste Education
Munni Sahariya, a shy girl with a nose ring, spread a jute mat on the floor of her first-grade classroom and sat down with her three younger siblings. As the teacher read the alphabet in the modest village school, Munni, 9, held her textbook in one hand and rocked her wailing 3-year-old brother with the other.
Munni is a bit old to be in first grade, and her brother is too young to be in school. But her parents pulled her out of school three years ago. Like many children in India, she was forced to stay home to take care of siblings. Others are forced to stay home to work.
In the meantime, Munni had forgotten how to read and write.
My mother and father do labor jobs in distant farmland and construction sites all day. I had to stay at home and take care of the younger ones, she recalled.
But Munni has returned to school thanks to an innovative government free-lunch program.
In Dataan, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, 59 percent of girls drop out of school before finishing fifth grade, according to government statistics. But school records in Dataan show a 23 percent increase in girls` enrollment and attendance since the program began three years ago.
Such food programs started in some states in 2002; a Supreme Court order made them mandatory nationwide as of January. Last month, India`s Finance Ministry raised the midday meal budget from $380 million to $670 million for 110 million primary-school children.
The campaign for nationwide lunches began in 2001, when social activists complained about starvation and malnutrition across the country. At the time, government warehouses were stocked with grain.
When schools provide midday meals, children often rush to the schools on their own, said development economist Jean Dreze, a member of the government`s National Advisory Council. There is strong evidence that midday meals have led to major increases in school attendance in many parts of India, especially among girls and disadvantaged children.
That`s why Munni`s mother sent her back to school. They only gave free food to the children who went to school, not those who were at home. So I sent her back to school last year, said Santo Sahariya, 45, at her one-room thatch hut.
She and her husband toil 10 hours daily to earn less than $2 to support their four children. She also sends the younger children with Munni, who can look after them … and they will also eat the food served there.
Munni said that within two hours of arriving at school, rats start running in her stomach, using a popular Indian phrase for being hungry. Officials said many children in India reach school without having eaten.
The state also distributes food to take home, a nutritious powdery substance
called India mix: ground soybean, wheat, gram, barley, sugar and glucose.
It is so popular among the children that we distribute it at the end of the day, so that they stay in school the whole time, said Munni`s teacher, Rafiq Ahmad.
An earlier effort to assist poor families and improve education by giving six pounds of wheat monthly to children who attended school was abandoned because they attended class only on the day of distribution.
When the bell rang for the school break in Dataan one recent day, children ran excitedly out into the courtyard, some with empty steel bowls and others with pages torn from old textbooks on which they would collect their meals.
They sat in neat rows under an acacia tree as a woman served ghoogri, a mix of boiled wheat and unrefined sugar, from a cauldron. Munni`s younger siblings, who were not enrolled, eagerly lined up for a share.
Dreze, the economist, said the food program also helps break the barriers of caste, class and gender because children learn to sit together and share a meal. But members of upper castes have sometimes complained about schools hiring untouchables, people at the bottom of the social hierarchy, as cooks.
Even with the free meals, Ahmad said, girls often drop out of school. They have to help the family during the harvest season or look after the younger siblings, the teacher said. Girls also get married quite early. It is very difficult to retain them because education is not a priority.
Munni`s mother acknowledged as much. She is our firstborn and we will marry her in about three years, she said. She can study until then.