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RSS comes up with region-specific 'nutrition thali'

Last Updated 09 May 2017, 21:07 IST
Attempting to establish saffron icons, the RSS plans to suggest to the Centre a “nutrition thali” tailored to region-specific food habits. The Sangh would also suggest naming the scheme after its ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh.

The RSS wants the government to recognise Nanaji’s “contribution” to society. And this it wants to achieve by persuading the government to pair  the ideologue’s name with the concept of thali, just as the Central government and the BJP adopted Sangh Parivar philosopher Deendayal Upadhyaya’s construct on “integral” humanism to empower the most deprived sections of society.

Some of the central schemes and programmes named after him are – Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen
Kaushalya Yojana, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana. An RSS think tank has held three workshops to draft a concept note on offering food, which are staple diets of different regions so that the food items could be integrated, for instance, in the midday meal menu.

RSS’s Deendayal Research Institute (DRI) secretary general Atul Jain said his think tank will prepare a proposal and submit it to the Centre after their two-day workshop starting on June 23 in Shillong.  “It is for the government to decide how to utilise our suggestion which is backed by agricultural scientists and experts from the field. We will also request the government to name the nutrition thali after Nanaji,” Jain said.

He said the idea came from Nanaji's original work on “1.5-acre model” and “2.5-acre model” for rural self-reliance. It was meant to encourage villagers to grow different grains on small patches of fields, he explained. Citing an example of flawed interpretation, he said an international agency, in its survey, had declared people of Satna district of Madhya Pradesh malnourished.

But the ground report gave a contrary result.  The international agency had measured consumption pattern of wheat and rice while the local population’s staple diet was coarse grain and millet, he noted.
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(Published 09 May 2017, 21:07 IST)

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