Report on Mid-day Meals Program

(An old post on my previous blog: posted on August 30th, 2006)

(This is a news article published in ‘Eenaadu’, a telugu news paper on 28-6-2006. The article depicts the pathetic situation of the mid-day meals program that is being implemented in the Government schools).

• Middle-men mismanaging the rice

• Agencies which did not receive the bills

• Unclean cooking and serving environment

‘Newstoday’ conducted a survey on mid-day meals scheme in 115 schools in AP. The numbers at glance:

1. Total number of students: 19,657

   Number of students present: 13,876

   Number of students who ate food in mid-day meals: 9592

   Number of students who didn’t eat food: 4,284

2. Number of schools with clean cooking and serving environment: 26

   Number of schools with unclean cooking and serving environment: 89

3. Number of schools in which rice served is good: 19

   Number of schools in which rice served is of poor quality: 96

4. Number of schools with no kitchen: 94

   Number of schools with kitchens that are unusable: 12

   Number of schools with kitchens that are in ruins: 4

   Number of schools with proper kitchens: 3

   Number of schools with kitchens under constructions: 2

5. Number of schools giving egg twice a week: 4

   Number of schools giving egg once a week: 95

   Number of schools giving egg once in 15 days: 3

   Number of schools giving egg once a month: 13

6. Number of schools which did not pay bills to agency from last 4 months: 68

   Number of schools which did not pay bills to agency from last 2 months: 32

   Number of schools which did not pay bills to agency from last 1 month: 15

“The mid-day meals program is being implemented very well in the state. The students are receiving nutritious food. Due to this, the students’ attendance also increased. Dwakra and self-help groups are getting their livelihood. There is no shortage of funds for this program.”

- This is the statement of Govt. on mid-day meals

To find out how far this is true, ‘Newstoday’ did this survey. From each of the 23 districts, it selected 5 government schools and on 18^th of August it conducted a survey in 115 primary and upper-primary schools state-wide. Of these, in 3 schools on that day the meals were not served, the reason being that rice is not received and the Dwakra and the self-help groups which are running the scheme did not receive the funds from the Government. In almost all the places, the situation is the same. The agencies are taking the raw materials for loan from the shops and cooking the meals for namesake. As a result, the food served is not sufficient and is tasteless

The rice that is given by the central Government for the mid-day meals for free is being mismanaged by the middle-men involved in the process. The 50 kilo rice bag that was supplied to the Hayathnagar Madal Parishath Central Primary school, Rangareddy district weighed only 45 kilos. The situation is the same in Ranganayakula colony, Kotthaguda, Bandaravi Upper Primary school, Batasingaram Central Primary school of the same district. The authorities themselves are agreeing with the fact that similar fraud is taking place state-wide.

And the nutrition aspect of the food is beyond discussion. As such the Government alloted Rs. 1.50 per student (from this month this is being increased to Rs. 2 but the bills are not yet paid) and it is not paying the bills to the agencies. Hence the agencies are executing the scheme according to their whims and fancies. Poor quality rice which is like a paste and watery sambar, this is the grand food served to the kids in the Government schools. On the days when there is no sambar, they serve dal and watery rasam. This the ‘menu’ that is being implemented in all the places state-wide. The vegetables are put in the sambar for namesake. The same is the case with dal and the leafy vegetables that are supposed to be present in dal. Each bag of rice contains at least one kilo of insects, stones etc. For the women groups who prepare the rice, the process of cleaning and washing the rice is of lot of effort. It is a joke to state that this kind of food supplies nutrition values to the kids.

Although the ministers and the Government officials announce now and then that “We issued orders to supply egg twice a week compulsorily to all the kids. And the authorities have told us that they are implementing it”, it is being not followed. And the number of schools which give egg once a week is also less. Only once or twice a month, the students are getting eggs.

Many schools do not have compound walls and as a result pigs are roaming freely in the premises of many schools. There is also the nuisance of dogs near the cooking place. Students have no choice but to eat food with dogs around them. In many schools, the cooking utensils and the surroundings used for cooking are highly unclean and unhygienic. About 20 percent of the kids attending school, go home and have their lunch. About 10 percent of the kids bring food from home. Many students told that they get stomach pain after eating the poor quality rice served at school. Even the parents are warning the kids not to eat lunch served at the school. There are many examples which contradict the statements made by the officials that the mid-days meals program helped in bringing down the number of absentees. The teachers tried to cover up the issue saying that since there were many holidays from 11^th of this month, the attendance was poor. But the villagers told ‘Newstoday’ that even in regular days on an average only 30 percent of the kids attend the school. In many places, kids leave the school immediately after the lunch is served. Even the teachers are not making any efforts to stop them from doing so. The main reasons for this being the lack of sufficient number of teachers in the schools and the absence of the teachers from their duties. Although there are many problems with the mid-day meal scheme, still the kids belonging to agricultural and industrial labor families depend on the school completely for their lunch. They eat the food offered irrespective of its quality and cleanliness. Only when the Government and the officials work towards the goal of providing tasty and nutritious food to them, the mid-day meals scheme can be successful.

Other hard facts:

• The mid-day meal scheme was not implemented in Bollapalli mandal Hanumapuram school, Guntur Dist. because the Government did not pay bills to the self-help groups since last four months. The shopkeeper from whom the agencies were bringing the raw material for loan refused to give anymore. Every month the Government has to give one quintal of rice per month to the school but the officials gave one quintal for three months. Even in the last month, the mid-day lunch was not served due to insufficient rice.
  


• The mid-day scheme was not being implemented in the Keshapur primary school, Nizamabad Dist. since last four months. The attendance of the students was low and the Dwakra group here decided not to cook since the margins they make will not be profitable.
  


• The officials stopped supplying rice to the school in Baisa mandal Ilegam, Adilabad Dist. since August 3^rd and the mid-day scheme came to a halt. Even in the month of July, the scheme was not implemented on four days.
  


• There is no water for the students to clean hands, wash the plates after the lunch in the school in Madakasira mandal N.R. Roppam, Ananthapur Dist. The students go home to clean their hands and wash the plates.
  


• In the school of Baheerabad mandal Navalga, Rangareddy Dist., with just 1 kilo of the dal, rasam was prepared that was to be served to 78 kids.
  

Mismanagement of rice by the middle-men:

The value of the rice that is being mismanaged by the middle-men is estimated to be 9 crores per year. The rice bags that will be supplied from the Indian Food Corporation will be stocked up in the Fair price shops (Ration shops). In the inspection of the MROs, the rice bags will be transferred to the schools. Once the rice bags reach the schools, it is found many times that the bag which should weigh 50 Kilos weigh only 45 Kilos. The headmasters and the women groups reported to the authorities this issue of less weighed rice bags being supplied but no action is being taken. There are accusations that there is involvement of people at all levels of administrative hierarchy in this scam. The central Government is supplying about 1.14 lakh tons of rice for the mid-day meal scheme. It is estimated that at least 10 percent of this quantity is going into the hands of these middle-men. The rice is supplied in gunny bags and without opening the bags, by means of the equipment used to check the quality of the rice, these middle-men are robbing the rice very cleverly. The Dwakra and the self-help groups are proposing that if the rice is supplied in plastic bags, these kinds of fraud can be decreased.

The mid-day meal scheme numbers:

Following the order by Supreme court, the mid-day meal program started state-wide on 2^nd January 2003. All over the state, the scheme is being implemented in 72,829 schools which caters to about 73 lakh students. In many schools, there are no basic facilities to conduct the mid-day meals. In 58,333 schools, kitchens were not constructed. In 26,354 schools, there is no drinking water facility. For 31,351 schools, there is no gas connection sanctioned. For the year 2006-07, about one thousand kitchens are proposed for construction. Central Government alloted 11.40 lakh quintals of rice for the mid-day meal scheme. The state Government bears Rs. 240 crores while the central Government gives Rs 131 crores towards this rice expense. In cities like Hyderabad, Vishakapatnam and Tirupathi, the implementation of scheme is alloted to social service organizations. Only in these places, the scheme is being implemented properly. In rest of the places, its implementation is totally improper. Except for the namesake checks done, there is no in-depth study of the scheme at the level of higher officials.

The hardships of the Dwakra groups:

• In just Rs. 1.50, the entire meal needs to be provided.

The Government is boasting proudly that the mid-day meal program is implemented very well. But the reality is far from it. The Government thinks that its job is done once it releases the funds and the rice. The entire work of implementation of scheme came into the hands of Dwakra and the self-help groups. They are bearing with all the hardships and the losses incurred in the scheme. But the officials are not even co-operating with them to pay the bills in time. The funds released from the education department main office reach the DEOs first and then the MROs. But there is a lot of delay in releasing the funds at all levels. About 50 percent of the women groups told us that they need to get money of the bills from last four months. About 25 percent should get money for the last two months.

Do you know what is the salary of the women groups who are running the scheme? ... Whatever they can save on the Rs. 1.50 alloted to each student. This is main reason for the poor quality of the scheme. Another reason being the untimely payment of the bills. If the number of students is less than 50, the Government is paying Rs. 2 per student. If the number is between 51 and 100, it will be Rs. 1.75 and above hundred it will be Rs. 1.50 per student. If the number of students is more than 100, the women groups should prepare the meals with just Rs. 1.50 per student. With the increasing prices of raw materials and the vegetables, it is practically impossible for the women groups to deliver quality food and also save money for their salaries. In many schools, they are using wood for cooking as they cannot afford the cooking gas. Though the Government increased the amount from Rs. 1.50 to Rs. 2 from the month of August, even this is not sufficient compared to the increasing prices. The price of dal which was between Rs. 18 and Rs. 20 per kilo at one time, now increased to Rs. 30 to Rs. 35. The price of tamarind is between Rs. 50 and Rs. 60 per kilo. The price of cooking oil is about Rs. 50 per kilo. They cannot afford to give egg twice a week as their prices increased. And the vegetables are getting expensive day by day. Therefore, the funds released by the Government are utterly insufficient.

The Government hoped that, in addition to providing nutritious food to the students, the mid-day meals program also helps in spreading communal harmony among students as they eat food together. But in the villages where the caste and creed differences are rooted from ages, this scheme is being ridiculed. Even now some of the families belonging to higher classes are not allowing their kids to eat the lunch provided in the scheme. Some of the students are going home for lunch under some pretext or the other and the rest are openly admitting that their parents asked them not to eat there. Some more students are brining the plates and also the water from home.

In Perapalla, Kurmiddha schools, Mahaboobnagar Dist. the students are eating lunch by sitting in different rows according to their caste. If the women cooking the food are from lower class, the students belonging to higher classes are eating lunch at home. In Khamman district, students are going home for eating saying that the agency women are cooking the food. In Sullupet mandal Peddapadava school, Nellore District, the students belonging to some sections of society are staying away from the mid-day meals program.

Primary school education in India

(An old post from my previous blog: posted on February 16th, 2006)

In this post, I would like to explain what I would like to do in near future based on my experience with Muskaan.

Keeping other things apart, the basic take away from Muskaan is that the basic primary school education is terribly poor. In some schools, there are no teachers for some subjects. In some schools, even if there are teachers, they do not teach at all. Its a government job and there is no one to monitor what the teachers teach. I also feel due to corruption many unqualified and untrained teachers get jobs.
The education standards of the kids in Muskaan is very bad and they all go to government schools. Kids who are in 4th class do not know how to read sentences while their textbooks are fairly complex with essays and poems. Last year we had a 7th standard student and if we give dictation from a 2nd class or 3rd class textbook he cannot write. What I am talking is about telugu which is their medium of teaching. The situation of english is horrible. Some students in 4th standard still dont know how to write small alphabets. These examples depict the plight of government school education.

I am not blaming the Government for the situation. I did some searching about this on the internet and I could collect some facts. The Government successfully increased the number of school and the number of kids attending school.

"From the first plan until the beginning of the sixth (1951-80), the percentage of the primary school-age population attending classes more than doubled. The number of schools and teachers increased dramatically. Middle schools and high schools registered the steepest rates of growth. The number of primary schools increased by more than 230 percent between 1951 and 1980. During the same period, however, the number of middle schools increased about tenfold. The numbers of teachers showed similar rates of increase. The proportion of trained teachers among those working in primary and middle schools, fewer than 60 percent in 1950, was more than 90 percent in 1987" (http://www.indianchild.com/primary_secondary_education_india.htm)

The Government is successful in increasing the numbers. But this needs to be taken to the next step to increase the quality of the education in these school.

I have only the question but not the answer. In fact, even if I motivate a group of people say 25 to work on this problem and lets us say we give it a time-line of 25 years, at the end of 25 years we should increase the standard of education in these schools, I still dont know how to approach this problem. Its because the government education system is highly coupled with politics and government policies and changing it would mean a change on all these spheres. Also the number of government schools is huge and the change should be properly propagated. But since the numbers of so huge, any change would mean tremendous impact.

Although I dont have a concrete solution, I have some crazy, impractical ideas about this.

- Pointing fingers: We can report to the government about the plight of the schools in terms of unqualified teachers, insufficient number of teachers and the irresponsibility of teachers. Here comes the crazy part. This can be done in a very dramatic way (taking inspiration from various news channels) with hidden cameras. These teachers should be exposed to public and thrown out of jobs. There are so many qualified unemployed youth who can fill these posts. A survey can be conducted by visiting these schools and taking opinions from the students. I know its crazy!
- Collective Responsibility: Instead of blaming the teachers or the system for the poor condition of the education standard, everyone of us can act on it and contribute our part towards the cause. Take a city like Hyderabad where there are so many software professionals (IT hub) and innumerable students (many engineering colleges and universities). If even 10-20% of these people can be influenced and motivated, each school can be adopted by a group and by taking turns they can teach in these schools. I know this approach is not scalable, but at least we can change the situation in the schools in and around Hyderabad. I know, I know its not practical!!

The problems I explained here are just a tip of the iceberg. I am not a pessimist but still there are many other problems like: lack of facilities in the hostels run by government for students, child labor, lack of sanitation, corruption, lack of monitoring for exams etc.
Bottom line: I am still looking for a proper approach and solution for the questions I raised above. Hopefully in this life, I will be able to provide my contribution of two cents towards this.

Comments:
saikrishna Says:
February 23rd, 2006 at 12:09 pm

“I will be able to provide my contribution of two cents towards this.”

You are doing a splendid job and the intiative is what that is required for this nation, sooner or later people will join.

I dont have a solution to the problem you have but i would like to add that the conditions are no better in private schools. The serious problem is that teacher which is the most respected job in the ancient indian society is now taken up by people who really don’t understand its significance. I have seen many teachers who hate teaching but still work as teachers. How good is learning if you can’t apply your knowlege?

We should aim at eliminating functional illiteracy and not just illiteracy from the nation for allround development. The main problem from my perspective is in our typical indian minds which are always insecure. When you are willing to work hard no profession is bad and money is not the only measure of success.

Finally, let me finish the comment with “I wish to contribute to the project”. I wish to replicate the same project in my village when i return.

My experiences with Muskaan -- Philosophy and Hardships

(An old post on my previous blog: posted on February 16th, 2006)

In my previous post, I wrote a brief history of Muskaan. In this post I want to discuss more about what are the aim and philosophy of this initiative and the problems we faced (and still facing) in running an activity like Muskaan.

Recently, I was talking to an group of enthusiasts called Bharat Uday Mission and I wanted to share my experiences with them. Then the first question posed to me was "what is the mission and philosophy of Muskaan?". I was taken back by the question for a moment because when we started to work for Muskaan we never sat and thought about these things. We just wanted to help these kids to the best of our abilities and utilizing the resources which are in our reach. Even though we did not sit and frame the goal and philosophy of Muskaan, to me the following can be said as its motto.

The main motivation for Muskaan is that these the kids, who are disadvantaged due to their economic and social background, do not have suitable environment at home and school for their proper development. Most of the parents of these kids are daily laborers and workers who are not educated. These kids go to Government schools which have lot of problems like lack of proper teachers and lack of proper teaching. Through Muskaan we want to create the necessary environment which helps them both educationally and socially. We teach subjects like English, Telugu and Maths. In addition to it, we have G.K. classes, yearly annual day celebrations, competitions etc which add fun part to their studying.

Another goal of Muskaan is to tell kids the importance of going to school and if there are any school drop-outs, making sure that they go back to school. Initially, we used to insist on this and take kids who go to regular school because we strongly believe that Muskaan can never be a substitute for a regular school. However due to various things, we have some kids who are school drop-outs. We tried to convince their parents to put them back to school. But since they are basically migrant, its not possible. Things stopped at this.
As the tag line of Muskaan: "Muskaan in my life" aptly explains whatever I articulated, we just want to fill smiles in their life. Now comes the hard part, the problems we face while running Muskaan.

- Volunteers: Initially the main problem is to get volunteers to support this initiative. Volunteers form the core part of running Muskaan. During the initial days, most of the volunteers were my lab-mates or batch mates or friends on campus. As days went, more and more people got interested and it because a big group. Typically, a volunteers stays with Muskaan for about 6 months to 1 year depending on their workload and in which year of study they are.

The main problem is not get people signed up for Muskaan, but make them work for Muskaan. On paper, there might be 20-30 volunteers registered but of them about 7-8 people will do the whole work. Since its a collective activity by all the volunteers, co-operation and sincerity among the volunteers is very important. Even today, we have about 80 volunteers registered. But over last few weeks there were some days on which Muskaan classed did not happen because all the volunteers who are supposed to go on a particular day, abscond themselves and do not inform about it to others.

The bottom line is that quantity is not important but dedication and motivation of the volunteers is atmost important. Since they work for Muskaan on a volunteer basis, we cannot demand any such qualities from them and they should come from within themselves. I was part of Muskaan when there used to 7-8 volunteers and at that time things went very smoothly because all the volunteers are well-motivated and responsible towards Muskaan. Today although we have 80 volunteers, I should say things are not going as well as they should.

- Kids: Another major problem we face with Muskaan is the set of kids we deal with. Some of the kids' parents are migrant laborers who visit cities like Hyderabad for work when there is no harvest in the village. When harvest season arrives, they go back to their village. Hence its not possible for these kids to join a regular school in their village nor in the city. Therefore, the set of kids we deal with constantly changes. Of course, there are about 5-6 kids who are there with Muskaan right from its beginning but this is an exception.

- Substitute for regular school?: Initially, we used to enroll only those kids who are going to regular school during the day. This is because we strongly believe that Muskaan can never be a substitute for a regular school since the amount of time these kids spend in Muskaan is about 2-3 hours. We only try to help them with their regular school syllabus. This was our mind set when we got started. But to our surprise, the standards of these kids were very poor. A fourth class student who have poems and proses in his english textbook can hardly spell even simple words. So we had start from basics. We had to start teaching alphabets, simple words, basic arithmetic etc. It was not possible to follow any specific syllabus. We decided upon some basic syllabus for each subject and had been following it. One of the problem here is that the kids keep on forgetting what was taught before. Especially if there is a vacation of 1 or 2 weeks, the kids simply forget everything that has been done previously. As a result, most of the kids are still learning what they were learning a year back or so. Most of the time is spent in revising the old syllabus.

This problem is aggravated by the fact that everyday a different person teaches the kids and its not the same person. At least we have seen to that for each subject the volunteers are fixed and hence guaranteeing some continuity. Even then it becomes difficult to communicate to the next slot volunteers what is done in the previous slot. As of today, we dont know how to handle the syllabus and the continuity problems.

- Method and mode of teaching: Since the set of volunteers keeps changing, different volunteers might teach kid in a different way. For instance, if we were to each addition, one volunteer teaches kid to add using fingers. Another volunteers teaches by drawing vertical lines on the book and yet another using small stones. At the end of it, the kid who is learning addition for the first time, get confused. It might be possible for the volunteers to meet and decide upon how to teach a particular aspect. But doing it regularly for each and every topic would hamper the interest of the volunteers in Muskaan. Therefore, we need some guidelines in the form of printed material as to how to teach small kids things like basic maths, sentence structures etc.

Bottom line: I am still learning based on my past experiences and hopefully will be able to come up with a model to solve the above problems.

My experiences with Muskaan -- Intro

(An old post from my previous blog: posted on February 15th, 2006)

I am part of a group called "Muskaan" which teaches kids of slums near IIIT in the evenings. This post gives an introduction and logistics of Muskaan.

About two years I joined a group called "Muskaan" which started just then. One of our professor Dr. Prosenjit Gupta took the initiative of teaching kids of near slums of IIIT in the evening. He called me and asked if any students in IIIT will be interested. I spoke to my fellow Ph.D. and MS students and was able to group about 9 people.

For a long time, I was very much interested in doing something for the poor and economically disadvantaged people. I was very happy to part of Muskaan and serve these kids. In the initial days, we used cow shed of a man who owns cattle. Kids used to reach there by 5:00 PM and we conduct classes till 8:00 PM. Initially, our biggest challenge was to make these kids come to Muskaan regularly. We used to give them intensives like chocolates, books etc and conduct fun classes like story telling etc to evoke interest towards Muskaan.

By the end of 2-3 months, we had about 25-30 kids in Muskaan. Then something went wrong: we were asked to vacate the cow shed we used to use. Then we shifted to another room which was across the street of the old place. Things went fine for about month or two and again due to some problems, we had to vacate even that room. We then approached a school in Indira Nagar to use their classrooms in the after hours of their school. The school people were more than happy to give us the place. This also didn't last for long. We were again thrown out for no reason.

Muskaan in the initial days	Muskaan's first annual day celebrations

At this, we thought we had to close down Muskaan. We even conducted classes under a tree on the side of the road. Then finally, Muskaan moved to IIIT which is its permanent location. IIIT's old canteen which is located very close the main gate was given by the institute to support this initiative.

Everyday kids collect at two pick-up points. Volunteers collect these kids at 4:45 PM and bring to IIIT for classes and again drop them back at the pick-up points at the end of the day. We have currently about 20 kids. Recently there was an overwhelming response from volunteers and we have about 80 volunteers who signed up for Muskaan. Muskaan is also part of IIIT standard curriculum where in UG students can join Muskaan for a semester and get one credit of extra curricular activities.

Excited kids during the function	Volunteers with kids	Volunteers with kids