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The Education Department has come up with a home-grown plan to enhance the nutritional content of the midday meals being served in government and aided schools across the State.
The department will encourage government and aided schools to develop “bio-intensive gardens” around their buildings wherever there is availability of space and water. High-yielding varieties of vegetables such as brinjal, drumstick and curry leaves will be grown here, which will go into the midday meals cooked to feed the children. Children, staff and the community at large will participate in maintaining the garden.
Commissioner of the Department of Public Instruction G. Kumar Naik told The Hindu that some schools in rural areas were already trying this out and there was good participation from the community as well.
Predictably, the response has not been very enthusiastic in urban centres, especially Bangalore. Part of the reason for this is non-availability of space and water compared to rural areas. The fact that schools in Bangalore are supplied cooked food by non-governmental organisations such as ISKCON, through a centralised kitchen, is another reason for lack of response. “The department is trying to discourage schools from giving children food such as “chitranna” (lemon rice) that is poor in vegetable and dhal content. We want children to eat more vegetable as part of their meal. No better way to ensure this than make it available in their backyard,” said Mr. Naik. The Karnataka Government introduced the midday meal scheme programme in June 2002 in seven backward districts. This was extended to all government and aided schools in a phased manner, covering about 58 lakh children. The government extended the scheme to high schools in the last budget.
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