With municipal schools on strike, kids left without midday meals

New Delhi: Zainab, Sana, Sumaila, Saima, Saina and Alisha, if not attending tuition classes, while away the day in the narrow bylanes of Hazrat Khwaja Peer Dard Colony, a stone’s throw from their school, Nigam Pratibha Vidyalaya on Turkman Road in Delhi. The children may be happy that they don’t have to go to school, but their parents worry that the kids are missing out on nutritious midday meals in school.
With 16,000 teachers joining the striking sanitation workers in the capital agitating for the past week for the payment of their salaries by the cash-strapped civic bodies, schools run by the municipal corporations have remained shut since February 1. This has had an unexpected fallout: many families who relied on the midday meals in schools for their children are now scampering to arrange meals at home for them.
“Of course, I prepare food for her at home, but on the many days when I have to leave home early and can’t cook for her, I am reassured that she gets to eat in school,” says Tarannum, Zainab’s mother, a housewife. She frets that the workers’ strike will deprive her daughter of food when she cannot cook at home.
The fare in school may be simple – poori sabzi, dal chawal and halwa – but the 11 o’clock repast is often the main meal of the day for many students from poor families. Sana, Zainab’s neighbour, lives nearby with her parents and three sisters. Mohammed Arif, her father, is a house painter and earns when he is hired by local residents. Sana’s mother has been ailing in hospital for some time, and in her absence the four girls have been fending for themselves.
“We weren't able to pack food from home, so my sister Sumaila and I used to have the midday meal. Saina is a bit choosy though,” says Sana, nudging her younger sister, a second-grader. “The food is okay. If it is cold, as it sometimes is, we tell our teacher and she takes care of it,” she adds. For days now, the 12-year-old has struggled to cook so that her sisters don’t go hungry.
There are many others who are similarly affected. However, Tariq Khan, a teacher in a school in Vivek Vihar Phase II who was one of the first to initiate the “chalk down” protest in schools run by the North and East Corporations, isn’t too apologetic. “The midday meal is a centrally-sponsored scheme to ensure kids meet at least minimum nutritional requirement,” he points out. “If the children are being deprived of a meal, the blame lies squarely on the government. We are helpless.”
Meanwhile, Sana neatly stacks her books and bags in a corner of her small house. “School may open tomorrow. We’ll go and enquire,” she says optimistically. Perhaps the morrow will also bring a hot meal.