New Delhi, September 07: As the clock strikes noon, the hungry murmur of the children at the government school in Frazer Town, Bangalore, is broken by the arrival of the blue pick-up truck. The kids chorus “Akshaya Patra” as large stainless steel vessels are unloaded from it and the call for lunch goes out. Most of these children are from families where a square meal is not guaranteed every day.
But on this occasion, there is the piping hot sambar rice and the cool, rich curd rice to feast on. There is no bar on how much each child could eat. Thirty minutes later, each kid returns to the class 500 calories richer and the truck leaves with a promise to return the next day.
In a country where 47 per cent of children are underweight and school drop-outs are often linked to poverty, providing good quality food on a large scale across the school network is not just a noble effort in charity but a smart investment in its economic future. But to do this every day for a million children in six states takes a mini miracle. That’s what Akshaya Patra (Sanskrit for “the vessel that never goes empty”) has achieved so far. And if things go according to plan, this initiative from Bangalore will cover five million children, and give the nation a sound model to counter both malnutrition and illiteracy.
The mission started serendipitously one day in 2000. Mohandas Pai, the then chief financial officer of Infosys Technologies, was visiting the Krishna temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Bangalore. Located on a hillock and paved liberally with marble, the temple also runs a mega kitchen that serves hundreds of thousands of devotees with sumptuous food offered to the Lord. When he saw this, Pai wondered: What if the temple could make a little extra to feed the children in nearby schools? “The most fundamental need of a human being is food,” says Pai. “If society can’t guarantee that, there is no need to build edifices on top of that.”
Pai, who had made a tidy sum from his stock options at Infosys, had already been looking for a good cause to contribute to. Years earlier, he had heard about the successful mid-day meal programme in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Studies showed that it resulted in an average child growing two inches taller and gaining 4.5 kg. It had resulted in taking literacy rates in the state to 73 per cent and had brought down infant mortality.
The hand that feeds
Pai asked a friend to introduce him to Madhu Pandit Dasa, head of ISKCON. Dasa immediately agreed to the proposal provided Pai could help distribute the food. Pai offered to donate two vehicles that could transport 16 tonnes of food each. They started in June 2000, serving 1,500 children. Thus began a simple partnership that would go on to become Asia’s largest mid-day meal programme.
Akshaya Patra’s achievement lies not just in this scale, but in the way it has forged a public-private partnership: It has brought together a religious institution, a state government and a number of corporate executives on a common mission to lift children from malnutrition and illiteracy. A December 2006 study by ACNielsen found that the scheme was indeed achieving that purpose. And a growing number of schools can’t wait for it to scale up and reach them.
Then, why is not everyone impressed?
In the three years to 2008, the number of children being fed by Akshaya Patra trebled to 900,000. And this rapid growth is already showing some signs of stress. Recently, a few lawmakers in Karnataka alleged that Dasa was collecting money for Akshaya Patra but diverting it to buy land for ISKCON. Since the plan is subsidised by the state government in Karnataka, there is no need for ISKCON to raise money abroad, they said.
The organisers of the food programme say it costs Rs. 4.68 to feed a child once. Of this, the Karnataka government contributes Rs. 2.64. The balance Rs. 2.04 must come from donations, the organisers say. It is here that the controversies have cropped up. ISKCON did hold a press conference in Bangalore to explain, but seem to have gone into a shell after that. As things stand, there is still mystery around those numbers and various calculations are floating around.
=–Agencies