Deal the midday meal, with care and fair,

Chhapra: The principal of the government school at Chhapra in Bihar where 23 students had died after eating poisonous mid-day meal was today remanded in jail custody for 14 more days.

Chhapra Chief Judicial Magistrate Arun Kumar Jha extended the judicial custody of Meena Devi by 14 days till August 19 in the mid-day meal tragedy that took place last month.

On July 25 the court had sent her to judicial custody till August 5.

The principal of Dharmasati Gandaman primary school had gone into hiding after the incident and was arrested nearly 10 days after the incident. An FIR was registered with Mashrakh police station against her under section 302 (murder) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) in the midday meal incident on July 16.

Her husband Arjun Rai, who has been accused of purchasing the poisonous pesticide which got mixed in the mid-day meal served to the children, is still absconding.

Meena Devi was last week subjected to polygraph test by an expert team from Central Forensic Science Laboratory of Delhi to verify her statement over the incident.

Arjun Rai had recently sought an anticipatory bail from a Chhapra court, which in turn sought the case dairy from the police.

Patna: Twenty-two children who survived after consuming contaminated mid-day meal in Bihar's Saran district three weeks ago were discharged from hospital in Patna today.

Two more children and a cook are still under observation at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) and were likely to be discharged soon.

As many as 23 students died July 16 after eating poisonous mid-day meal in a primary school at Dharmasati Gandaman village of Chapra in Saran district.

PMCH superintendent Amarkant Jha Amar told IANS that the children were discharged after a medical board found them healthy and fit.

He said the hospital had gifted new clothes and toys to these children. "It was a big day for all of us as the children returned home with smiles on their faces," he said.

"The children and their attendants were happy after being discharged," he said.

Chhapra: As Gandaman village in Chhapra district of Bihar mourns the death of 23 children after having eaten their mid-day meal, there has been an unfortunate fallout of the horrific tragedy: children in government schools around the village have, since the fateful Tuesday, refused to take their meals in school.

NDTV visited one such school in Masrakh, only a few kilometres away from Gandaman, to witness firsthand the ramifications of the tragedy. 

Six cooks in the school have been sitting idle for the past three days with the parents here refusing to allow their children to eat at the school. "Our parents feel that what happened in Gandaman could happen to us. They have asked us not to eat here because there could be poison in the food," says a girl.

When asked whether well-cooked, healthy meals were being served there, the children had a resounding "No" for an answer. They said insects and maggots have been found several times in the food supplies while the cooks working at the school were often found drunk.

The school in Masrakh, ironically called a 'model middle school' had a dilapidated look with the roof crumbling and the benches broken. Ankit, a class 8 student, said, "We sit on gunny bags. When we complain, our teachers beat us."

When asked whether he fears he may be reprimanded for speaking his mind, he says "All they will do is beat me more. But I have to speak the truth." 

With fear and anger pervading across the district, the challenge of convincing parents to send their children to schools in Chhapra, already recovering from the death of 23 innocent children, has become even more difficult.

The concept and the purpose of initiating anything is always good but when it comes to the management then we are

miserable. The same thing has happened to Mid-day Meal Scheme in India. It has been found by the Human

Resource Development (HRD) ministry that most of the states are receiving complaints regarding the schemes but no

one is acting on these complaints that are filed against the programme. State of Uttar Pradesh has the highest

number of complaints (25 complaints) followed by Bihar (16 complaints). Haryana has 11 complaints whereas

Madhya Pradesh has 10 and West Bengal has 9 complaints. Most of the complaints are regarding the poor quality of

food. Some of the complaints are really serious but yet not attended.

Recently 79 students of a government school in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan were admitted to hospital as they fell ill

after consuming mid-day meal. This happened because of the food poisoning caused by a dead lizard found in the

food. There are more cases, such as, in 2011, 126 students at a Sarvodaya Vidyalaya fell ill after having a mid-day

meal, insects were found in the mid-day meals served in Assam, 42 students fell ill after consuming a mid-day meal

at Haryana. Such stories are really annoying and put a question mark on our management system.

The concept of mid-day meal scheme is not new in India as its roots can be traced back to pre-independence era

when British administration initiated a Mid Day Meal Programme for disadvantage children in Madras Municipal

Corporation in 1925. Like this many such programmes were initiated in different states. In 1953, Government of Uttar

Pradesh started another such scheme. Tamil Nadu became the first state in India to introduce a noon meal

programme in primary schools. In 1984 this scheme was introduced in Gujarat. From time to time the meal scheme

was taken up by different states and later on it was taken up as a national scheme. As per Mid-day Meal Scheme all

the children studying in primary and upper primary classes in Government school will get free lunch during working

days. As per Government, this scheme is the world’s largest school feeding programme.

As said earlier, the objective of initiating was very good. First and the foremost was to wipe out the ever increasing

malnutrition and chronic hunger in India then was to increase the enrolment in the schools, to encourage social

mixing of kids at schools, to generate employment for women as cook and organizers. But lack of close monitoring

and quality guidelines are creating hurdles.

There are certain critical issues that need to be tackled such as irregularity in serving meals, abnormality in supply of

food grains to schools, caste based discrimination in serving of food, poor quality of food, poor coverage under

School Health Programme, poor infrastructure especially of kitchen sheds, poor hygiene and poor community

participation. Mid-day meal related scams and other such issues further weaken the entire scheme. That is why

42.5% of children under 5 are still underweight. Rate of child malnutrition is higher than most of the other countries in

Sub-Saharan Africa.

Government must take steps to find out why the mid-day meal schemes are in such a shape even after allocating

huge budget to these schemes. Why proper attention to cleanliness and hygiene is not given while preparing and

serving the food to kids?

To keep a check, a mid-day meal monitoring committee has been set up. Government is now focusing to strengthen

the committee further so that such incidences can be avoided. The committee will monitor the qualitative parameters

such as hygiene. After all, the success of mid-day meal scheme depends upon the quality and how effectively the

entire chain is managed.

Serious concerns were raised after the death of 23 children in Bihar on 16 July 2013 after eating pesticide contaminated mid day meal served in Dharma Sati village in Saran District on . The scheme which costs the national exchequer a huge amount of money every year (the budgetary provisions for the year 2013-14 was around Rs 132,150,000,000 for the country) is marred with corrupt practices and mismanagement while risking the lives of

children.[34] On 31 July 2013, around 55 students of a government middle school complained of uneasiness after consuming the midday meal provided by an NGO at Kalyuga village in Jamui district and in Arwal district, 95 students

of the Chamandi primary school were taken ill after the meal.[54] While the Bihar MDM tragedy has again highlighted the issue of accountability of officials responsible for the mismanagement of the scheme, in many parts of the country, the MDM scheme still remains a major attraction of children from poorer sections of the country as a reward for attending schools.