A close relative
who is a teacher in a high school told me recently that he gave up the responsibility
of looking after the free midday meal scheme implemented in his school due to
rampant corruption. He lamented that the quality provisions supplied to the
school found their way to the homes and kitchens of various members of the
staff almost regularly and the leftovers were left for providing meals to the
students—many of whom are poor and needy. This has been the universal picture
in the largest ‘dysfunctional democracy called India. Here the corrupt human
hyenas are not satisfied with the leftovers, but devour away the main chunks.
We have seen in this country how the fodder for animals gets siphoned off for
the quick buck. The corrupt ‘human’ hyenas do not even spare the ‘human’ kids
who have done them no harm at all. Right, in this great country there has never
been any dearth of good and suitably targeted schemes, but at the
implementation level always the hyenas muck it up in a stinking mess of
corruption. 
At a time when the
Government of India promulgated an ordinance to implement its most ambitious
Food Security Bill providing staple grains to the poorest of the poor at
nominal rates of 1-2-3 rupees per kilo the free lunches provided to the school children
throughout India under the Midday Meal Scheme killed 23 primary school kids in
Bihar—the same northern state that got famous for the fodder scam. Thanks to
the corrupt human hyenas it was the abysmal quality of the meals and the
presence of pesticides in the soybean curry that started killing the kids in
the most ruthless manner—some on the spot, some on the way to hospital and some
in hospital. More than fifty kids took days of horrible sufferings to escape
death. And, the great common-man-obsessed political leaders of this great
country hardly cared.
The blame game
started in right earnest as the common people of Bihar
and the rest of the country looked aghast and distressed. The ruling JD-U government
of Bihar indicated a conspiracy of deliberate
poisoning while its coalition partner just a month ago—the BJP—announced that
it knew about sorry implementation of the midday meal scheme for years. National
coalition politics prevented several other parties including the Congress from
shouting too much anguish into it. This gives a horrific similarity to the
politics in Buddhist Shrine Terror recently. This is very understandable since
all the political parties are really busy gearing up for the General
Elections-2014 or even earlier in their unique ways of uplifting the common man
only. That common man has kids too does not seem to matter for our leaders,
obviously because the school kids are not voters.
The Midday Meal Scheme that was adopted by most Indian states after 2001 contributed largely
for the spread of education too apart from nutritious meals. Poor families do want
to send their kids to primary and high schools as this would take at least one
major meal out of their tiny daily budget. But the corrupt human hyenas that rot the
system from top to bottom eat up the kids’ food and frighteningly eat up the
kids themselves.
Why not make
this largest democracy of the world still larger? Why not give voting right to
all babies from the day of birth, to all kids at all levels and to all school
children? Let us see then if our noble national leaders take up their cause
too.
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