Congress MP Senthil Sasikanth, economist Jean Drèze and six other experts on Tuesday wrote to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin urging him to scrap a proposal to set up centralised kitchens under the state’s midday meal scheme.
The proposal was made in the Justice K Chandru Committee report, which suggests measures to curb caste discrimination in educational institutes.
However, the group of experts and researchers argued that centralised kitchens would be detrimental to this purpose. They also said that centralised kitchens could hamper the implementation of the school meal programme.
In August 2023, the state government appointed a single-member committee comprising Chandru, a retired judge of the Madras High Court, to recommend measures to eliminate caste differences among students in educational institutions.
This came after two school students from a Scheduled Caste community were killed by a group of students from an intermediate caste at Nanguneri in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.
Chandru submitted his report to the state government in June.
One of its recommendations was to do away with decentralised kitchens for cooking food under the midday meal scheme in government schools and replace them with central kitchens in every block.
Chandru’s argument was that centralised kitchens would avert the problem of discrimination against Dalits, who cook and distribute food under the school meal programme.
“Responding to this problem by centralising kitchens would do more harm than good,” the group wrote. “For one thing, it would amount to caving in. Experience shows that a much better approach is to insist on the right of Dalit women to cook midday meals.”
They added that opposition to Dalit cooks tended to fizzle out when administrations stood firm.
On-site cooking in schools promotes accountability because the meals are cooked in front of students, teachers and parents, the experts said. “When food is cooked at centralised kitchens, there tends to be little public scrutiny,” they cautioned.
The group added that centralised kitchens would incur additional expenditure on storage, transportation and refrigeration. There is also the danger of food getting spoilt in transit if adequate arrangements are not made to prevent it, they pointed out.
“On-site decentralised kitchens employ large numbers of poor women as cooks and helpers, 27% of whom are Dalit or Adivasi women in Tamil Nadu,” the letter said. “The Chandru committee report suggests redeploying cooks and helpers in other public-sector jobs, but this is much easier said than done.”
The group claimed that private contractors were “more interested in making profits than in providing good nutrition to children” when tasked with running centralised kitchens.
“In some cases, these contracts have been awarded to organisations that tend to impose irrational restrictions on the midday meal menu, such as the exclusion of eggs or even onion and garlic,” the grou said.
Other recommendations in the Justice K Chandru Committee report include prohibiting students from wearing coloured wristbands, rings or other markers of caste identity, reported The Hindu.
The report also suggests removing caste appellations in the names of government schools. It says that attendance registers in classrooms should not contain details about students’ castes and that seating arrangements in classrooms should be based on the alphabetical order of their names.
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