Corporate support irks NGOs

MID-DAY WONDERS PART-II

The Akshaya Patra Foundation made a beginning from Bangalore. Set up by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon), it is supported by several city-based corporates. It is running kitchens in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Ujjain, Puri and Brindavan besides Baran and Jaipur in Rajasthan.

The foundation, which is funded in many places by Infosys and other information technology firms, has constructed huge centralised kitchens, appointed its own cooks, and has its own transportation system for taking food from the kitchen to various schools.

The Naandi Foundation in Hyderabad is also supporting the mid-day meal scheme in several states.

Backed by Mahindra and Mahindra, Dr Reddy's Labs, Satyam and other companies in Hyderabad, the consortium has set up the biggest centralised kitchen in Asia in Hyderabad. Spread over two acres, the kitchen supplies meals to 880 schools in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

In Chittorgarh, the foundation has joined hands with Hindustan Zinc Ltd to set up a kitchen. While Akshaya Patra feeds 350,000 children daily in 1,000 schools, Naandi feeds 440,000 children.

In Mangalore, hi-tech kitchens are being set up using the steam boiler method with the help of ONGC and MRPL. More and more corporates are coming forward to join the effort, say human resources development ministry officials.

According to Rajasthan Director of Education Sudhansh Pant, Havells has been active in Alwar, while the Aditya Vikram Birla group has committed itself to feeding schoolchildren in Chittorgarh district.

The JK group has agreed to help in Nagpur, while Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra has promised Rs 1 crore for setting up a kitchen in Udaipur. "This is in addition to what he is doing through Naandi Foundation," says Pant.

But economist and social researcher Jean Dreze, who was actively campaigning for universalising mid-day meals in schools, says, "I am not happy with the corporates taking over. The private sector will always have its agenda and priorities which may not always be good for the well-being of the child. Maybe they can do a bit in the urban areas. But rural areas have to be under the care of the government or civil society groups."

Pant says that the intervention of corporates cannot ever match the requirement, so large are the scales. "We feed 7.5 million children in Rajasthan and the corporate share is only 250,000. They may reach the 8-lakh figure but that is nothing."

Besides, he says that the centralised kitchens and mechanised cooking sponsored by corporates are a model appropriate for big towns and peripheral areas alone.

"We cannot replicate this in rural areas," he says.

But that has not deterred the Rajasthan government, for instance, from creating a mid-day meal trust to facilitate donations from any prospective benefactor.