I will seek to critically analyze the mid day meal scheme being implemented in India. I will look into the details of the aims of the scheme, its target group, details of implementation. I will try to estimate and analyze the success of the mid day meal scheme. I will also try to look the scheme in meeting the objectives it set out to achieve through King don three model. Therefore, to know the limitation of this mid day meal policy I will follow Kingdon’s theory of agenda setting, three streams of problems, politics and policy come together at the same time, a window of opportunity occurs, issue come into the agenda.
Kingdons’s theory suggests problem identification and politics put an issue on the agenda, and the policy alternatives are a secondary factor in agenda setting. The present study is an analyze of this aspect of Kingsdon’s theory by reviewing the policy on Mid-Day-Meal Scheme (MDMS). Kingdon’s model underlines the existence of three distinct, but complementary, processes, or streams, in policy-making. It is the coupling of these streams that allows, at a given time and in a given context, for a particular issue to be turned into a policy. These three streams are
- The stream of problems. The rationale behind this stream is that a given situation has to be identified and explicitly formulated as a problem for it to bear the slightest chance of being transformed into a policy. Indeed, a situation that is not defined as a problem, and for which alternatives are never envisaged or proposed, will never be converted into a policy issue.
- The stream of policies. The second stream used to explain how an issue rises or falls on an agenda has to do with the stream of policies. This stream is concerned with the formulation of policy alternatives and proposals. An extremely important aspect of this model is the belief that such proposals and solutions are not initially built to resolve given problems, but rather they float in search of problems to which they can be tied.
- The stream of politics. Although they take place independently from the other two streams, political events, such as an impending election or a change in government, can lead a given topic and policy to be included or excluded from the agenda. Indeed, the dynamic and special needs created by a political event may move the agenda around.
When question comes how do an issue becomes part of agenda setting. It comprises of many things such as
(i) An event or crisis.
(ii)-Information/evidence from evaluations and existing programs
(iii)-Reveals that a situation (because of severity, magnitude, number of people affected, etc.) requires attention.
(iv)-Values, beliefs or motivations can turn a condition or situation into a problem.
(v)-Collective action of interest groups, protests, lobby, social movements around a particular topic.
(v)-Role of the media.
(vi)-Political changes.
According to Dearing and Rogers,“The agenda setting process is an ongoing competition among issue proponents to gain the attention of media professionals, the public, and policy elites.” (Dearing and Rogers, 1996). On the contrary, other issue does not become part of agenda because it has following reason.
(i)Problem Definition
(ii)Crowded Out (by other issues)
(iii)Problem not recognized as a relevant issue/problem
(iv)Deemed not to be a legitimate state concern.
(v)Non-decision-making
Background of Policy
Here, I would mention about background of policy which I am going to look at. Mid Day Meal in schools has had a long history in India. In 1925, a Mid Day Meal Programme was introduced for disadvantaged children in Madras Municipal Corporation. By the mid 1980s three States viz. Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the UT of Pondicherry had universalized a cooked Mid Day Meal Programme with their own resources for children studying at the primary stage. By 1990-91 the number of States implementing the mid day meal programme with their own resources on a universal or a large scale had increased to twelve states.
The National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education known also as Mid Day Meals Scheme with a view to enhancing enrollment, retention attendance, and simultaneously improving nutritional levels among children. The National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE) was launched as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme on 15th August 1995, initially in 2408 blocks in the country. By the year 1997-98 the NP-NSPE was introduced in all blocks of the country. It was further extended in 2002 to cover not only children in classes I -V of government, government aided and local body schools, but also children studying in EGS and AIE centres. Central Assistance under the scheme consisted of free supply of food grains @ 100 grams per child per school day. It had subsidy for transportation of food grains up to a maximum of Rs 50 per quintal.
In September 2004 the scheme was revised to provide cooked mid day meal with 300 calories and 8-12 grams of protein to all children studying in classes I-V in Government and aided schools and EGS/ AIE centres. In addition to free supply of food grains, the revised scheme provided Central Assistance for (a) Cooking cost @ Re 1 per child per school day, (b) Transport subsidy was raised from the earlier maximum of Rs 50 per quintal to Rs. 100 per quintal for special category states, and Rs 75 per quintal for other states, (c) Management, monitoring and evaluation costs @ 2% of the cost of foodgrains, transport subsidy and cooking assistance, (d) Provision of mid day meal during summer vacation in drought affected areas.
3. In July 2006 the scheme was further revised to provide assistance for cooking cost at the rate of (a) Rs 1.80 per child/school day for States in the North Eastern Region, provided the NER States contribute Rs 0.20 per child/school day, and (b) Rs 1.50 per child/ school day for other States and UTs, provided that these States and UTs contribute Rs 0.50 per child/school day.
4. In October 2007, the scheme has been further revised to cover children in upper primary (classes VI to VIII) initially in 3479 Educationally Backwards Blocks (EBBs). Around 1.7 crore upper primary children were included by this expansion of the scheme. From 2008-09 i.e w.e.f 1st April, 2008, the programme covers all children studying in Government, Local Body and Government-aided primary and upper primary schools and the EGS/AIE centres of all areas across the country. The calorific value of a mid-day meal at upper primary stage has been fixed at a minimum of 700 calories and 20 grams of protein by providing 150 grams of food grains (rice/wheat) per child/school day. 8.41 cr Primary students and 3.36 cr Upper Primary Students i.e a total of 11.77 cr students are estimated to be benefited from MDM Scheme during 2009-10.
Today, Mid day Meal scheme is serving primary & upper primary school children in entire country. Sinha, Shanta (2004).
Analysis
Problem Identification
First of all, question comes to our mind why do policymakers pay attention to some problems and not others? The answer lies in the way officials learn about conditions and, more important, the way these conditions come to be defined as problems. There are three ways to identify conditions. First, indicators may be used to assess the existence and magnitude of a condition--for example, economic conditions or human rights practices of countries around the globes can be monitored either routinely or through special studies. The indicators then can be used to measure the magnitude of change in the hope of catching official attention. Second, dramatic events or crises can occasionally call attention to a problem. A military coup or a revolution acts as a powerful stimulant for more or less foreign aid. Third, feedback from existing programs can bring conditions to the fore. Letters from Letters from constituents and impact evaluation studies are two relevant examples. Actually, not all conditions become problems . As Kingdon (1995 , p. 110) categorically asserts, problems contain a "perceptual, interpretive element.”
Whereas, according to Porter, for a social condition to be a problem, people must perceive it is such, and also see it as the condition amenable to a government action (Porter, 1995). So mid day meal problem was identified by PUCL. They started campaign with a writ petition submitted to the Supreme Court in April 2001 by People's Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan. Briefly, the petition demands that the country's gigantic food stocks should be used without delay to protect people from hunger and starvation. This petition led to a prolonged; public interest litigation (PUCL vs Union of India and Others, Writ Petition [Civil] 196 of 2001). Supreme Court hearings have been held at regular intervals, and significant "interim orders" have been issued from time to time. However, it soon became clear that the legal process would not go very far on its own. This motivated the effort to build a larger public campaign for the right to food. In 2001, the Supreme Court ordered that the states should provide cooked meals for all school-children up to the fifth standard.
So in this way,MDMS was the result of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Rajasthan, before the the Supreme Court. The case was filed initially against the Government of India, Food Corporation of India (FCI) and six state governments, alleging that more than 50 million tonnes of food grains was stocked up with FCI while there was widespread hunger in the country, particularly in the drought-hit states of Rajasthan and Orissa. Eventually the list of respondents was extended to include all the States and Union Territories. The Supreme Court issued an order asking the states to implement eight different centrally-sponsored schemes for food security and to introduce cooked mid-day meals in all the government and government-aided schools. FAO’s latest report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008 asserts that worldwide there were 923 million undernourished people in 2007, compared to 848 million in 2003–05. In 2008 the number of people suffering from chronic hunger is likely to have increased even further. According to a 2009 statement of the World Bank, the number of undernourished people exceeds now 1 billion. Shockingly, regression, rather than the progressive realization of the right to food, is the motto of the day.
Policy Stream
It includes variety of ideas floating arounf such as the "policy primeval soup." Ideas are made by specialists in policy communities--networks that include bureaucrats, congressional staff members, academics, and researchers in think tanks who share a common concern in a single policy area. Then a policy get formed. People thought together and came up with consensus that middaymeal is best possible solution. And this solution came from long struggle by PUCL through right to food. Later Super court gave the order to all the state to follow it. One truth emerges clear that judicial intervention is important in the fight for pro-poor policies. According to Jean Dreze "It is hard to imagine how mid-day meals could have been extended to 100 million children within three years without the firm intervention of the Supreme Court." He believes, however, that the right place to bring up issues like right to food is Parliament and not the courtroom. "The fact that it took public interest litigation in the Supreme Court to get political leaders to focus on children's nutrition rights is a telling reminder of the lopsidedness of Indian democracy." (Zaidie, Annie (2005)
Even we find that many states are not able to adopt it due to inadequate fund. If we critically analysis irrespective of the policies adopted by the State the poor have always found their own ways of overcoming the limitations facing them and their own reasons for doing so. The challenge of securing a better future for their children is in no way different from their overall struggle to access resources and institutions in general. The real issue is whether the policies and programs aimed superficially for their benefit recognize this and support them in their endeavor. MDMS can be realized only if there is a demand created for schools and such a demand can emerge through an intense social mobilization and public action programme against child labor and in favor of children’s rights especially the right to education through full time formal schools.
MDMS Objectives: to promote enrolment and elimination of hunger and Encouraging poor children, belonging to disadvantaged sections, to attend school more regularly and help them concentrate on classroom activities.
Strength
i-increasement in enrolment
ii- increasement in attendant
iii- improvement in nutritional status of children in classes
Limitation
i-very poor infrastructure facilities (e.g. cooking shed, water supply and
utensils);
ii-repetition of the same menu every day.
iii- inadequate fund.
Political Stream
According to Kingdon, it may be it may not be favourable to the policy. There might be changes in government and there might be public protest against this policy which could influence it. Fortunately, there was public mood in favour of this MDMS policy. The MDMS policy was accepted which had a lot gain for the betterment of society. And there was no risk factor which could be prevented it from the getting adopted. But politicians and bureaucrats tend to be lukewarm about the free mid-day meal programme because there are very few rent-seeking opportunities in such low-budget schemes. While it is an accepted fact that mid-day meal scheme has had a positive impact on some children. It must be recognized that it has not met the issue of freedom from hunger of all children. Thus if there has been a marginal increase in attendance of children due to the mid-day meal scheme this may have provoked only some children but not all children to be in schools regularly. While, those children who are out of school are left out of the scheme, even those who attend school regularly are not all reached out to by the mid-day meal scheme because the programme is confined only to the primary level and even this is yet to be initiated in many states.
So as of now there are only 50 million children benefiting who avail of the opportunity for the mid-day meal scheme and about 150 million children in the 5-14 age group are not being covered under this programme. It is estimated that the overall coverage of the scheme as of January 2004, is only in half of India’s 31 states, with seven states with an aggregate of 400 million populations not implementing the scheme so far despite the Supreme Court order. It is being implemented fully in the states of Gujarat, Kerala, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu and in substantial parts of other states including Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, partially in Chattisgarh, Delhi, Orissa, and Punjab, but not at all in Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana (Third Report of the Commissioner, May 1st,2003). The expected reason given by the states that have not implemented the scheme has been that of ‘lack of funds’.
It has been seen that it is more lack of the political will to implement the scheme rather than anything else. For example, “it would cost the Uttar Pradesh government a mere Rs.300 crore per year to provide mid-day meals to all primary (upto class V) children. And if all the estimated 150 million children enrolled in government primary and secondary schools across the country are provided free mid-day meals (as in the US), the additional expenditure incurred (including the cost to the central government, transportation and state government costs) at Rs. 3 per student per day for 200 days would aggregate Rs. 9,000 crore annually — an 11 percent increment of the national education outlay of Rs. 80,000 crore. ( Parika,2004). The programmes of Mid Day Meals deal with the phenomenon of hunger as much as with nutrition and school absenteeism. Therefore, there is a need for political consensus. Prosperity at one pole and hunger at the other was not sustainable.
Problem in Policy Implementation and Scarce Resources.
Issues of exclusion and caste discrimination do afflict the MDMS’s precursor scheme of distribution of dry grain to government school children. According to IIDS survey addresses the cooked, shared meal MDMS, data from the three states of the study in which the MDMS has been thus implemented (Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) will provide the substance of the following discussion. Finally, to measure Dalit caste discrimination in terms of treatment in the MDMS, the seating or eating arrangement is used as a measurable indicator, with segregated arrangements indicating discrimination, and integrated arrangements indicating non-discrimination. As a second indicator, subjective comments by respondents regarding preferential treatment or other informal methods of discrimination, are considered.( Joel, Lee and Thorat, Sukhadeo (2004)p.10)
There are many cases of social exploitation and discrimination in many school places. Caste-based discrimination was reported in two of the 63 schools that were visited. The absence of any evidence of caste-based discrimination in most schools is encouraging, and from this point of view mid-day meals have an important socialization value. Also, some discrimination is likely to have occurred in the selection of cooks. Although there were Dalit cooks in the sample villages, their number might have been higher in the absence of caste discrimination. Indeed, there have been media reports of Dalit cooks being removed in response to local protests, generally from parents belonging to non-Dalit castes. Another problem in the provision of mid-day meals is that in some places supplies are irregular or inadequate. The supply of wheat for some schools is based on last year's enrolment, and since enrolment has risen quite dramatically, the amount of wheat provided is often inadequate. Khera, Reetika (2002).
The findings of our earlier studies (on the delivery of primary education in six districts of West Bengal) confirming varying degrees of social discrimination based on caste and religion. “ In two of the 15 villages under the study, upper caste Hindu children did not take food in the school, as the cook was a Muslim lady in one school and in the other she was a Dalit. In a school, children of caste Hindu families told us that they wanted to take the food but their parents forbade them from doing so. “Chan na kare ghare dhukte debena – [parents] won’t allow us to enter the house without having a bath.” Rana, Kumar (2004).
The major emerging obstacle to the success and spread of the mid-day meal programme comes from the upper-caste opposition to it. C. Chaluvaraju, headmaster of the Government Higher Primary School in Uramarakasalagere village, Mandya district, with his pupils. The mid-day meals served in the school were boycotted by upper-caste children as instructed by their parents, as the head cook was a Dalit. Several villages in Mandya district of Karnataka have boycotted the programme, protesting against the appointment of Dalit cooks. "The whole of our village consists of upper-caste people. Our children will not eat food made by a Dalit. If the government insists on retaining the cook, then we will reject the entire bisi oota scheme. Our children can eat at home," G. Sadasivaiah, the president of the SDMC at the Government Higher Primary School in Gowdeyanadoddi village, told Frontline. Menon, Parvathi (2003)
It seems that the rationale behind hot cooked meals arises from the unsatisfactory trends in improvements in levels of under nutrition. Based on the three rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), “the all-India average reveals that there has been stagnation in the percentage of children (0-3 years) who are underweight. The number has reduced in the stunted category and has registered an increase in the wasted category. While the reduction of the stunted category is positive, the increase in the proportion of the wasted category is worrying.”( Rama Baru, 2008 Economic & P 20 Political Weekly).
Similarly, we find view Jean Dreze agrees that the mid-day meals' impact on child health and nutrition is questionable, as of now. "The quality of the meals is inadequate. However, with the recent injection of financial assistance for mid-day meals from the Central government, there are unprecedented opportunities for upgrading the quality and diversity of the food provided.” Drèze, Jean and Vivek S. (2003).
Probable Solution
Apart from playing a very important role of eliminating classroom hunger and reducing the level of under nutrition..
It has to be noted that the cooked Mid day Meal programme alone cannot change the whole schooling system increased attendance of the children does not necessarily mean a better quality of education. Efforts are needed to streamline the whole schooling system from allocating more funds for infrastructure to ensuring better teaching and learning in the classroom. Mere pious pieces of advice by the political leaders and government officials are not sufficient to put a stop to teachers’ absenteeism of various kinds, particularly under a ramshackle inspection system. Stronger supervision by the local community can be the best corrective measure to eradicate these evils. Parents’ involvement in the implementation of the midday meal programme armed with certain legal power (through the parent-teacher committees) can bring about a sea change in the actual delivery of education. Needless to say that the local communities, parents are the most essential driving force not only for the implementation of the Mid-day-Meal programme, but also for the governance of the primary schools as a whole.
While planning for implementation of mid day meal programme, the issue of universal coverage is seldom raised. It is assumed that all children may not be able to come to schools and therefore the mid day meal scheme can act as an incentive to increase the enrolment and attendance of children in schools. In doing so, unwittingly the issue of provision of midday meal is seen as a means to increase enrolment and therefore is satisfied when there is a slight shift in the enrolment figures as a consequence of the scheme. Since the issue of hunger touches each and every child, and since a large number of children still do not access schools. Calculations made on the basis of some more children being in schools and not on all children requiring being in schools are just not enough. It is necessary to see that to achieve a universal coverage of the right to food programme there is a need for universal access of every child to schools.
Conclusion
It seems that the Mid-Day-Meal policy is an example of Kingdon’s theory of three independent streams-identification of problems, generation of policy alternatives, and finally politics-coming together during a window of opportunity to arrive at change. In particular, hunger, wastage of grains the issue during 2001 became more critical matter for problem identification which was raised by PUCL. Public mood clearly favored this compaign (right to food) so the interest groups, NGO, and the right to food is a human right (Indian Constitution) and is a binding obligation well-established under international law, recognised in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So they united through right to food campaigns and utilized the national mood to fight against hunger. The Mid day meal scheme definitely adds an incentive to the student to go to school. It needs to be directed in the right places so as to fulfill the objective of providing nutrition to the children. Most parties involved agree that the measures suggested by the National Advisory Council will lead to better running of the scheme. But it needs introspection and deliberation on the part of the policy makers as well as implementation agencies in making this scheme a success and incentivize it to motivate children to come to schools.
REFERENCES
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Shantha Singh; Mid day Meal Schem and Schools-A Need for Universal assessment.
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Rama Baru, Rajib Dasgupta, Mita Deshpande, Aparna Mohanty,Full Meal or Package Deal? June 14, 2008 Economic & P 20 Political Weekly).
Zaidie, Annie (2005) Food, for education ,Frontline, March 2005.
Parikh, Kalpana and Summiya Yasmeen (2004) Groundswell for mid-day meal scheme (India Together, January 2004).
Joel, Lee and Thorat, Sukhadeo (2004) Dalits and the right to food: discrimination and exclusion in food related government programs.
Rana,Kumar (2004) The Possibilities of Mid-day Meal Programme in West Bengal by Kumar Rana, Pratichi (India) Trust, p. 23).
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( Rama Baru, Rajib Dasgupta, Mita Deshpande, Aparna Mohanty,Full Meal or Package Deal? June 14, 2008 Economic & P 20 Political Weekly).
AGENDA-SETTING: THE UNIVERSAL SERVICE CASE;Joanne D. Eustis, April 7, 2000
Blacksburg, Virginia.
