HindustanTimes.com

Thursday, July 24, 2003

Digesting equality

Jean Drčze

Recent media reports of upper-caste opposition to school meals in south
Karnataka underline the ‘socialisation’ role of mid-day meals. Indeed,
restrictions on the sharing of food play an important role in the
perpetuation of caste inequalities. Teaching children to sit together and
share a common meal at school, irrespective of caste, is a good way of
defying traditional prejudices.

Of course, it is also possible for mid-day meals to be a tool of
reinforcement rather than erosion of prevailing social inequalities. For
instance, during a recent survey of mid-day meals in Rajasthan, we came
across one village (Joz in Rajasamand district) where Dalit children were
asked to drink from separate pitchers. This is an abominable instance of
caste discrimination in the classroom, which defeats the socialisation role
of mid-day meals.

How common is caste discrimination in the context of mid-day meals? The same
survey sheds some useful light on this issue. This survey, initiated by the
Centre for Equity Studies, covered 81 schools in three regions: Rajasthan,
Chhattisgarh and north Karnataka. The findings suggest that open
discrimination is rare. For instance, we did not find any cases of separate
sitting arrangements, or of preferential treatment being given to
upper-caste children. Pupils of all social backgrounds seem to be happy to
sit together and share the same food. Parents, too, claim to welcome the
arrangement in most cases. Teachers confirmed that parents rarely objected
to their children sharing a meal with children of other castes. And among
disadvantaged castes, very few parents felt that their children had ever
experienced caste bias in the context of the mid-day meal.

These responses, however, do not rule out subtle forms of caste prejudice
and social discrimination. While open objections to the mid-day meal on
caste grounds were rare, upper-caste parents were often sceptical of the
scheme, and even actively opposed it in a few cases. Some upper-caste
parents send their children to school with packed food, or ask them to come
home for lunch. Whether this is a manifestation of caste prejudice (as
opposed to class privilege) is not always clear, but the caste factor is
likely to play a part in many cases.

Further, there seems to be much upper-caste resistance to the appointment of
Dalit cooks. In north Karnataka, half of the cooks in the sample were
Dalits, and this arrangement seems to have gained fairly wide acceptance. In
Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, however, cases of Dalit cooks were largely
confined to schools with no upper-caste children. We also noted instances of
active parental resistance to the appointment of Dalit cooks. For instance,
we were told that in village Kolu Pabuji of Jodhpur district, a Rajput
parent had thrown sand in the mid-day meal after finding out that the cook
was a Meghwal woman. She was promptly replaced by a woman from one of the
‘backward castes’.

These findings do not detract from the general socialisation value of
mid-day meals. In a sense, they even enhance it: if upper-caste parents
initially resist mid-day meals, there is much value in overcoming that
reluctance. There are strong indications that the caste barriers tend to
weaken quite rapidly over time.

The contribution of mid-day meals to social equality is not confined to the
erosion of caste prejudices. They also promote gender equity in several
ways. First, mid-day meals dramatically reduce the gender gap in school
participation. The reason is that they boost female enrolment much more than
male enrolment. One recent study estimates that the provision of a mid-day
meal in the local school is associated with a 50 per cent reduction in the
proportion of girls who are out of school. The survey mentioned earlier also
finds clear evidence of a surge in female school participation after mid-day
meals were introduced, particularly in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In
Rajasthan, for instance, mid-day meals led to a remarkable jump of 29 per
cent in Class I female enrolment in the sample schools.

Second, mid-day meals create job opportunities for women, especially poor
women. This is all the more so when the programme guidelines specify that
all cooks should be women, as in Karnataka. In Tamil Nadu, each primary
school has three paid staff: a cook, a helper and an ‘organiser’. Most of
them are women, and this has become an important source of female employment
in rural areas.

Third, mid-day meals contribute to the liberation of working women by
freeing them from the burden of having to feed their school-going children
at noon. As Sudan Mati, a 35-year-old tribal woman from Bilaspur district
(Chhattisgarh), puts it: “Since our child has started getting food at
school, we don’t need to worry about him going hungry, and I don’t need to
come back after half a day’s work to prepare his lunch.” This is especially
relevant for widowed mothers, who often work outside the house without the
benefit of any domestic support.

Mid-day meals also help reduce class inequalities. Indeed, children enrolled
in government schools today come mainly from disadvantaged families. Thus,
mid-day meals can be seen as a form of economic support to the poorer
sections. More important, perhaps, mid-day meals facilitate school
participation among underprivileged children. This is likely to reduce
future class inequalities, since lack of education is a major source of
economic disadvantage and social marginalisation in India.

In their innocent garb, mid-day meals are a powerful threat to the
prevailing inequalities of caste, class and gender. This is one reason,
among others, why mid-day meals deserve more attention from individuals and
organisations committed to social equity.

The writer is Honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics

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