OrthoDoc

Back in the men’s room. One hip surgery was already on in the theatre. I was scheduled to go for the next one. I still had a lot of time on my hand. The mens room was full.

The Tamil Nadu election results was coming out on the TV. B was aligned with the DMK and a few others were aligned with ADMk. Our Consultant was also back in the scene. He was equally curious to know who would get the majority this time around.

As we switched between Tamil to English channels, I was suddenly reminded about Rajdeep Sardesai’s hosting a talk show in the Anna University campus with some prominent figures from Chennai, both political and non-political. Among them was N Ram, the editor of The Hindu.

The boys grappled with the results that were pouring in when there was some comment on how the politicians had thrown in populistic measures to draw people onto their sides. In response to this I brought up a remark N Ram made in the talk show – Not all populist measures were necessarily bad for the people. The best example of this was the mid-day meal scheme.

In this light it was not necessarily bad that the DMK had promised 2kg of rice for the common man. 2 acres of land was too much of a promise to match, though. There was sudden opposition to the idea. How can populist measures be good for the people?? Everyone seemed to agree that mid-day meal schemes have done well but no one seemed to agree that it was a populist measure to start with. There is no doubt that the fight in Tamil Nadu was focussed on the enticements, read populism, that the two major factions had to offer. Whether the winning party, that is the DMK, lives upto its promises and whether it will be beneficial to the people of Tamil Nadu …only time will tell.

I ended doing some searching on the web about the mid-day meal scheme. I had read about it in detail during the Community Medicine classes in med school. Everything seemed to have slipped out of memory.

My visit to Wikipedia revealed a reasonable write-up on the mid-day meal scheme and how it originated.

One of the pioneers of the scheme is the Madras corporation that started providing cooked meals to children in corporation schools in the Madras city in 1923. The programme was introduced in a large scale in 1960s under the Chief Ministership of Kamaraj. But the first major thrust came in 1982 when the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Mr. M. G. Ramachandran, decided to universalise the scheme for all children in government schools in primary classes. Later the programme was expanded to cover all children up to class 10. Tamil Nadu’s mid-day meal programme is among the best known in the country.

There was more on it which with respect to populism.

Although the programme in Tamil Nadu was initially termed as an act of “Populism“, the success of the scheme made the project hugely popular. The success was so spectacular that in 1995, the then Indian Finance minister Manmohan Singh hailed the success of the project and suggested that the scheme be implemented all over the country, and thus began the “National Programme for Nutrition Support to Primary Education”.

At the website of – Right to Food Campaign – there were more articles on this issue. Find a list of them by clicking here. One of them that I picked up had a lot to say about the history of the mid-day meal scheme in particular – Rajivan, Anuradha (2003) Nutrition Schemes in Tamil Nadu

Some interesting facts that I picked up from the article

• Providing food for children outside the home is not a new idea in TN. In some form or another this has been in operation from way back in 1956.
• School mid-day meals scheme became operational in the state of Madras in 1956. Initially it was started with purely voluntary contributions from the local people. Within a year the government stepped in.
• In 1967 the system was radically modified to operate through Central Kitchens.
• On July 1st 1982, TN saw one of the largest expansions of mid-day feeding through the Noon Meals Program (NMP) of the former Chief Minister, MGR.
• The noon meal feeds a population of over 7.7 millions nearly every day, not through dry rations or precooked items like biscuits, but serving a hot rice meals cooked on the spot for all. (Today it must be even more!!).

Presently the scheme has been expanded to all parts of India, especially after a directive from the Supreme Court in 2001. There is a similiar scheme operating also in UK, known as the Free School Meal.

I wish I was armed with all this ammo in the morning when I was alone in the men’s room defending N Ram!!

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