ODISHA (India), Oct 12 (Reuters): Nearly two years of elevated food inflation in India is leaving less in the lunch boxes of impoverished children, as government funded school meals suffer cutbacks because of rising prices of vegetables, fruits and pulses.
The three-decades old programme, intended to draw poor children into school and provide them with basic nutrition, throws into sharp relief the inflationary impact of food on the nation's most needy and the widening inequality in the world's fastest growing major economy.
Reuters interviews with 21 school teachers across four states, a dozen families and researchers show schools have been forced to scrimp on key ingredients as the meal budget under the scheme has not increased for the last two years despite soaring food prices.
The programme covers an estimated 120 million children across a million government and government-aided schools up to class 8, data available on the scheme's website showed. Teachers and school administrators manage the quality of food provided.
"Budget for the mid-day meal scheme is not indexed to inflation regularly as it should be, compromising the quality of the meal," said Dipa Sinha, an independent development economist and researcher who works with the 'Right For Food' campaign, an informal non-government network of organisations and individuals.
"While the government provides free grain for these meals, that does not compensate for a cut-back in other nutritious ingredients like vegetables, pulses, milk and eggs due to inadequate budgets," said Sinha.
A case in point is 8-year old Ranjit Nayak, who lives in Ghugudipada village, 150 kilometres from Bhubaneshwar, the capital city of the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Ranjit's family of five survive on daily wages of about 250 Indian rupees ($2.98) and can afford to feed him and his 4-year old brother little more than boiled rice on most days.
Often, the school provides his very first meal of the day, but the food price spike has left an unwelcome aftertaste in recent times.
"My son is sometimes satisfied with the school meal, but other days it's just yellow water with hardly any dal (lentils)," said Arati Nayak, Ranjit's 26-year old mother who weaves dry leaves into disposable plates earning 25 rupees a day.
The rising cost of cooking oil, vegetables and potatoes has made it difficult to provide a nutritious meal for students, said Chhabi Nayak, head of the managing committee at the Ghugudipada school.
The school opts for cheaper variety of lentils and skips more nutritious vegetables like carrots to manage budgets, he said.
The heatmap shows the yearly growth in inflation of major food components in India for past 12 months.Inflation for most food groups in this period has been above 6 per cent inflation tolerance limit of central bank.
India's food inflation has averaged 6.3 per cent between June 2020 and June 2024, a central bank study published in August showed, compared to 2.9 per cent in the previous four years. It eased slightly in July and August due to statistical base effects but is expected to have risen again last month.
