New Delhi: In a recent move, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday (January 28) has announced that it will no longer provide funding for eggs and sugar in midday meal programmes for government-run schools, Hindustan Times reported.
In November 2023, the government had decided to provide students with one egg per week to combat protein deficiency, with the option to opt for fruit instead of eggs. However, following protests from right-wing groups, the policy was modified in January 2024 to exclude schools where at least 40% of parents opposed the serving of eggs.
Now, according to a government resolution, schools that wish to continue providing eggs to their students will have to generate funds through public contributions. The resolution also states that schools must arrange funds for sugar and eggs through public contributions if they want to serve optional dishes like egg pulao and sweet treats.
The state government had allocated Rs 50 crore annually to provide eggs to 24 lakh school children. However, the revised meal plan will now focus on ten different dishes that can be prepared using existing funds, the report added.
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The midday meal programme, now known as the PM POSHAN scheme, is a centrally sponsored initiative that provides one hot cooked meal per day to students in government and government-aided schools. While the Union government funds the majority of the programme, state governments and Union Territories bear 40% of the cost and are responsible for implementing the programme.
A wrong move?
In an article published on The Wire in 2023, health researchers Dr. Sylvia Karpagam and Siddharth Joshi had mentioned, “Given that eggs are one of the most nutritionally dense foods containing good quality, bioavailable and digestible protein as well as nutrients such as folate, zinc, Vitamins A, B12 etc., their nutritional value was never in doubt.”
Further, this article written in the context of the Karnataka government continuing to provide eggs to students despite opposition underlined the “Brahminical conceptions of purity and impurity” behind the anti-egg campaign.
“In spite of demonstrable evidence that inclusion of eggs is a necessary nutritional intervention, which is both culturally acceptable and also brings in much-required diversity to the mid-day meals, their distribution in the scheme is being obstructed by ideological barriers rooted in Brahmanical conceptions of purity and impurity of food practices. By sticking to the decision of providing eggs in midday meal, Karnataka has hesitantly joined its southern neighbours in challenging Brahminical cultural hegemony on defining food as pure and impure, one hopes that it stays that way,” the authors wrote.
Rights activists involved in the Right to Food campaign have repeatedly pointed out that eggs can help improve the nutritional status of children and is particularly important since the prevalence of “nutritional deficiency, stunting, underweight and other kinds of health issues is higher in the children belonging to marginalised communities”.
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“One must recognise that the problem is not just the absence of eggs from the menu at schools and anganwadis. The menu lacks diversity in the form of milk, dairy, vegetables, fats/oils, pulses and legumes in many of the States. The prevalence of nutritional deficiency, stunting, underweight and other kinds of health issues is higher in the children belonging to marginalised communities. Due to the vicious combination of malnutrition and illness, the children and families of these communities are the most vulnerable without the intervention of the state. Eggs in these scenarios can tilt the nutritional status of a child and would help gaining essential nutrients in fighting malnutrition and ill health conditions. Eggs provide many of the nutritional needs including good quality proteins, minerals, vitamins and fats. They are easy to cook, not prone to adulteration and pilferage like other foods and contribute to increasing school attendance,” the campaign had said in a 2021 press release.
Besides the nutrition factor, eggs are easier to handle as they have a longer shelf-life and are more convenient to stock particularly in rural areas, economist Reetika Khera wrote on Scroll. “Consider the following advantages of eggs: they have a longer shelf-life than milk or bananas. In rural areas, with decentralised kitchens and where refrigeration facilities are non-existent, this is a pretty useful thing. Eggs cannot be diluted or adulterated like milk or dals. Equally important, as Arti Ahuja (the IAS officer who brought the Integrated Child Development Services to life in Odisha) pointed out, provision of eggs can be monitored easily. Even a child can tell you whether she got her full quota of eggs, so corruption is easier to control.”
