[Millennium Post Investigation]
Mid-Day Meal Scam: Part VII
Read Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI
The mid-day meal scheme was launched with much fanfare and noble intentions in 2003. By the time it extended to the entire country, covering about 11 crore students at primary and upper-primary levels in 2011-12, its monetary allocation had touched a level of about Rs 9,000 crore. However, what is startling is that the figure of scam also kept rising with each passing year. The Millennium Post investigation into the scam has found a scam worth Rs 106.79 crore in 2011-12 in Delhi schools alone for about 14 lakh students. When the same parameters are projected on the entire country, the approximate figure of the scam touches a whopping Rs 8,868 crore in the year.
It may appear that stealing a portion of one small mid-day meal will not add up to much. But, when the money saved from each meal is added to the 14 lakh students, who the Delhi civic bodies and the state government claim to have fed in 2011-12, it shows that the agencies involved in preparing and distributing the meals saved about Rs 763 per student in this financial year.
This money is siphoned off by non-governmental organisations in connivance with officers of the implementing agencies in Delhi – the Delhi government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment Board – from the plates of these primary and upper-primary students in the name of providing nutritious food in schools. They steal this amount in four ways: firstly, by saving over half of the grain allocated by the government by feeding two students in the allocated grain for one student and selling it in the market; secondly, saving over half of the conversion cost by not cooking that stolen grain; thirdly, fudging attendance records by overstating the number of students who eat these meals; and fourthly, by degrading the quality of grain. These methods of saving money are established in earlier parts of this series of reports.
The mid-day meal scheme was introduced for upper-primary students in Delhi in 2009-10. The money siphoned off in the three years since then is around Rs 295.79 crore. The money embezzled in 2008-09, when only primary students were covered under it, comes around Rs 52.50 crore. The scheme for primary students was introduced in Delhi in 2003 and the number of students in from 2003 to 2008-09 have almost remained the same. If we project the amount of the scam from 2008-09 – whose figures are available with Millennium Post – on to the period from 2003-04 to 2008-09, the amount of scam reaches a figure of Rs 210 crore. Thus, the total amount of mid-day meal scam in Delhi from 2003-04 to 2011-12 comes to around Rs 505.79 crore.
If we project the size of the scam of the last three years from Delhi to the entire country, it reaches the figures of Rs 8,868.57 crore in 2011-12, Rs 7,174.57 in 2010-11 and Rs 7,063.69 crore in 2009-10. The country, thus, is sitting on a mega-scam of Rs 23,106.83 crore in just three years. The money, alas, has come from the taxpayers and stolen from the plates of poor students.
The Millennium Post team has calculated the amount of the mid-day meal scam in Delhi from the financial year 2008-09 to 2011-12 and then used these figures to project the amount of the scam on the entire country. The logic for the projection is that the same model of implementing the scheme is followed in other states as in Delhi schools.
In Delhi, we calculated the amount of the scam on (a) the money earned by selling the saved grain in the open market; (b) the money earned by saving the conversion cost; (c) the money saved by fudging the attendance records and adding ghost students; and (d) the money saved by using lower grade grain that prescribed in the scheme guidelines.
The money saved in the first category is the open-market price for the half of grain allocation saved on every student per year and multiplied to the factor of the total number of students in Delhi in that financial year. In the second category, half of the conversion cost is multiplied to the total number of students, since the half of the allocated grain in not cooked. In the third category, we have gone by personal visits to Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi government schools and talked to sources to establish that the attendance and enrolment records are fudged by a factor of about 20 per cent. In the fourth category, we have calculated the cost of A-grade grain stipulated to be provided by the Food Corporation of India and then taking the average cost of lower grade of grain in the financial year in question.
Then, we used the figures thus obtained of the last three financial years and calculated the cost of the scam per student in Delhi and projected it on the country. We left out the year 2008-09 from the calculation, because Delhi used the scheme only at the primary school level till then.
The cost of corruption per student per year in Delhi came round to Rs 763 in 2011-12 and was lower than this in the preceding two years. We multiplied this figure with the number of students who were covered under the scheme at both primary and upper-primary levels in the entire country, which is 11,62,61,382. We took this number to be the average of the last three years and calculated the size of the scam in the three years.
The final figure of Rs 23,106.83 crore was calculated by adding the size of the scam in each of these three years.
Mid-Day Meal Scam: Part VII
Read Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI
The mid-day meal scheme was launched with much fanfare and noble intentions in 2003. By the time it extended to the entire country, covering about 11 crore students at primary and upper-primary levels in 2011-12, its monetary allocation had touched a level of about Rs 9,000 crore. However, what is startling is that the figure of scam also kept rising with each passing year. The Millennium Post investigation into the scam has found a scam worth Rs 106.79 crore in 2011-12 in Delhi schools alone for about 14 lakh students. When the same parameters are projected on the entire country, the approximate figure of the scam touches a whopping Rs 8,868 crore in the year.
It may appear that stealing a portion of one small mid-day meal will not add up to much. But, when the money saved from each meal is added to the 14 lakh students, who the Delhi civic bodies and the state government claim to have fed in 2011-12, it shows that the agencies involved in preparing and distributing the meals saved about Rs 763 per student in this financial year.
This money is siphoned off by non-governmental organisations in connivance with officers of the implementing agencies in Delhi – the Delhi government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment Board – from the plates of these primary and upper-primary students in the name of providing nutritious food in schools. They steal this amount in four ways: firstly, by saving over half of the grain allocated by the government by feeding two students in the allocated grain for one student and selling it in the market; secondly, saving over half of the conversion cost by not cooking that stolen grain; thirdly, fudging attendance records by overstating the number of students who eat these meals; and fourthly, by degrading the quality of grain. These methods of saving money are established in earlier parts of this series of reports.
The mid-day meal scheme was introduced for upper-primary students in Delhi in 2009-10. The money siphoned off in the three years since then is around Rs 295.79 crore. The money embezzled in 2008-09, when only primary students were covered under it, comes around Rs 52.50 crore. The scheme for primary students was introduced in Delhi in 2003 and the number of students in from 2003 to 2008-09 have almost remained the same. If we project the amount of the scam from 2008-09 – whose figures are available with Millennium Post – on to the period from 2003-04 to 2008-09, the amount of scam reaches a figure of Rs 210 crore. Thus, the total amount of mid-day meal scam in Delhi from 2003-04 to 2011-12 comes to around Rs 505.79 crore.
If we project the size of the scam of the last three years from Delhi to the entire country, it reaches the figures of Rs 8,868.57 crore in 2011-12, Rs 7,174.57 in 2010-11 and Rs 7,063.69 crore in 2009-10. The country, thus, is sitting on a mega-scam of Rs 23,106.83 crore in just three years. The money, alas, has come from the taxpayers and stolen from the plates of poor students.
The Millennium Post team has calculated the amount of the mid-day meal scam in Delhi from the financial year 2008-09 to 2011-12 and then used these figures to project the amount of the scam on the entire country. The logic for the projection is that the same model of implementing the scheme is followed in other states as in Delhi schools.
In Delhi, we calculated the amount of the scam on (a) the money earned by selling the saved grain in the open market; (b) the money earned by saving the conversion cost; (c) the money saved by fudging the attendance records and adding ghost students; and (d) the money saved by using lower grade grain that prescribed in the scheme guidelines.
The money saved in the first category is the open-market price for the half of grain allocation saved on every student per year and multiplied to the factor of the total number of students in Delhi in that financial year. In the second category, half of the conversion cost is multiplied to the total number of students, since the half of the allocated grain in not cooked. In the third category, we have gone by personal visits to Municipal Corporation of Delhi and Delhi government schools and talked to sources to establish that the attendance and enrolment records are fudged by a factor of about 20 per cent. In the fourth category, we have calculated the cost of A-grade grain stipulated to be provided by the Food Corporation of India and then taking the average cost of lower grade of grain in the financial year in question.
Then, we used the figures thus obtained of the last three financial years and calculated the cost of the scam per student in Delhi and projected it on the country. We left out the year 2008-09 from the calculation, because Delhi used the scheme only at the primary school level till then.
The cost of corruption per student per year in Delhi came round to Rs 763 in 2011-12 and was lower than this in the preceding two years. We multiplied this figure with the number of students who were covered under the scheme at both primary and upper-primary levels in the entire country, which is 11,62,61,382. We took this number to be the average of the last three years and calculated the size of the scam in the three years.
The final figure of Rs 23,106.83 crore was calculated by adding the size of the scam in each of these three years.