[Millennium Post Investigation]
Mid-Day Meal Scam: Part-I
Read Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI & Part-VII
In this scam-a-day season, there is hardly anything that shocks us any more. But, imagine the reaction if we are told that the food kept aside for feeding poor students in municipal schools with the hope of increasing their attendance and providing them nutritional support is being looted blatantly. But, sorry to disappoint you if expect a big corporate or political name steering this scam. This is a big swindle that is rooted in the differences in government policy at the centre and municipal levels, with small and medium non-governmental organisations leading the charge, thus making it a form of systemic corruption, rather than a one-off act of dishonesty.
A Millennium Post investigation has revealed that the voluntary organisations engaged to provide mid-day meal to students in Delhi schools are feeding at least two students on the grain allotted for one and siphoning off over half of wheat and rice allocated to them. The investigation reveals that once we calculate the cost saved by the NGOs and add the extra mouths they are feeding with the allocated amount of grain, the scam runs into crores of rupees. A full detail of the size of the scam will be presented in the last part of this series of reports.
Furthermore, most of the A-grade grain received free from the government for this purpose is being sold in the market and poor quality grain is being purchased to replace it. The extent of scam is aggravated by the manipulation of attendance records of students who attend school, and therefore consume mid-day meals, from an actual, more realistic, figure of about 40 to 50 per cent by about 20 to 30 per cent.
What is even more shocking is the fact that teachers and principals of schools are hands in glove with NGOs and babus to save their jobs, as a decrease in the number of students enrolled in these schools brings down the requirement for teachers.
If you want to know how this scam is being executed, you need to look no further than your kitchen. For example, if you use about 100 grams of uncooked, average-quality rice from the market, its weight increases to around 270 to 280 grams when cooked. But, according to the standards of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi [MCDs] in North, South and East zones, the weight of rice item – including cooked rice and either of dal, chole or rajma – should reach the plate of a primary student should be 250 grams in weight. The latter category usually weighs as much as half of this prescribed weight. So, while 100 grams of uncooked grain per student is procured from central agencies, by the time it reaches the student's plate, only half of it is used in the cooked form.
The NGOs provide mid-day meals in containers of 10 kilogrammes each, which contain around nine kilogrammes of cooked rice for 70 to 80 students from the nursery level to Class V in primary schools. Thus, an average student gets a maximum of 120 to 140 grams of cooked rice in their plate along with around 100 to 120 grams of cooked dal, chole or rajma, most of whose content is watery curry. This formula is applicable for classes from the nursery level to Standard V, whose students are between the age groups of 3-4 to 9-10 years, and, therefore, eat less. Over 57,450 students out of a total of 10,05,600 students in the corporation schools are nursery-standard students. Their average age is four years, but the NGOs running the mid-day meal schemes claim 100 grams of grain for them as well while they eat much less.
These NGOs are provided a separate budget for dal, chole or rajma to be served along with cooked rice. But, the 100 grams of A-grade rice per student per meal is directly provided to the meal-delivery agency from the nearest godown of the Food Corporation of India. They pick rice from the godown once in a month and provide meals to students thrice in a week of six working days. Similarly, these NGOs get 100 grams of wheat per student per meal from the government to provide wheat-based items for the remaining three days. As per quantity standards of MCDs, the wheat-based mid-day meal in the plate of a student should weigh 200 grams including one vegetable dish.
The NGOs provide three puris to each student, weighing about 25 grams each, for this category of meal. This meal comes with about 100 to 120 grams of watery potato sabzi or chole. Thus, each student gets around 175 to 180 grams of wheat-based meal on their plate. However, with 100 grams of wheat one can easily make six puris, weighing about 160 grams. To meet the MCD standard of wheat-based meal, one needs to use only half of the wheat obtained from FCI godown. What happens to the rest of it is a story that needs to be told.
Along with free wheat and rice, the central government also gives Rs 3.11 per student per meal as conversion charge to provide dal or sabzi and cooking cost. Besides, Rs 75 per 100 kilogrammes of grain is provided as transportation charge from the godowns of FCI to the kitchens of these NGOs. By not cooking around half of the grain, these NGOs save around half of the conversion charges.
According to the MCD rules, one teacher is appointed for 30 students up to a strength of 200 students enrolled. Over a strength of 200 student, a student-teacher ratio of 1:40 is maintained. Over 70 per cent of teachers in MCD schools are women, who are generally discouraged by their families from working in schools very far from their homes, given their socio-economic conditions. So, it becomes in their interest to inflate the number of students enrolled in their schools who use the mid-day meal scheme facility. For the same reason, they also show that about 60 per cent of the enrolled students attend school and avail the mid-day meal scheme.
The loot in mid-day meal schemes is not just happening at the level of drawing more grain from the Food Corporation of India [FCI] and then supplying only half of it to students. The scam has other layers, which vary from the quality of food served to showing in records those students who never ate the food thus prepared. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies [CSDS], a research institute in Delhi, was made a designated monitoring institute [MI] by the union Ministry of Human Resource Development for the scheme. It has been expressing concerns on lesser quantity and poor quality of food being served in Delhi schools, but all its reports are falling on deaf ears.
'Invariably the quality of meals supplied is not satisfactory, and the quantity too tends to be lesser than prescribed,' observed the team of experts from the CSDS after visiting 87 primary and upper primary schools in Delhi in September to October 2011. Every year, the CSDS sends almost similar report to the central government but not even a single NGO has been penalised in Delhi for playing with the nutritional health of young students.
In its annual report of 2012, the expert committee of the CSDS also mentioned that 70 per cent children did not like halwa served as part of mid-day meals – which is served once in a week – but it is still continued in the menu. And, the main reason, according to sources, is that its input cost is low.
The matter of poor quality and lesser quantity was also raised in the meeting of the Programme Approval Board [PAB] on 3 April 2012, which is a body of the human resource development ministry and was called to allocate food grains and funds for scheme for 2012-13 in Delhi. As per the minutes of the meeting, accessed by Millennium Post, Amarjit Singh, a joint secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy of the central government, raised the issue in the meeting. 'During the recent visit by the central team, it was noted that the food grains at the time of lifting were being received as grade 'A', however, the same quality of food grain did not reach the MDM kitchens, as for example, the available stock of foodgrains in the godown of the centralised kitchen of Maitri Research and Development Foundation in South West Delhi was not of even Fair Average Quality [FAQ],' said Singh in the meeting.
Interestingly, these NGOs have been using all the food grain, both wheat and rice, and the entire budget of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi [MCDs] for this scheme since it was introduced in 2003. In the financial year 2011-12, the MCD – before it was divided into three bodies – was allocated Rs 16,198.02 metric tonnes of grain from the FCI, of which equal amount of wheat and rice was issued. The MCD records show that the complete amount of grain was used by the end of the financial year. The same happened to the cooking cost and conversion charges. As per the report submitted to the PAB by the MCD through the nodal officer of the Delhi government for approval of the next year's budget, only 64 per cent of the total grain was used in the first three quarters from 1 April to 31 December 2011. Surprisingly, the remaining grain was utilised in the next three months and an addition amount of 542.09 metric tonnes was also lifted from the FCI godown.
The total enrolment in MCD schools as on 31 December 2011 was shown to be 9,86,962. It also includes students who enrolled but did not continue going to school regularly. Out of this figure, the schools showed that 6,59,701 students consumed mid-day meals, which, in December 2011, is about 67 per cent of the enrolled students, but it will be far lower number if we take into account the number of students who actually attended schools daily and thus became eligible for consuming mid-day meals. In 2011-12, the central government had set a target of 7,71,336 students for the mid-day meal scheme in MCD schools. The December 2011 figure, thus, becomes almost 86 per cent of the central government-approved number. It shows that there was an attempt by MCD schools to take the number of students having subsidised meals close to the number set by the centre, so that they could claim additional grain in the next quarter.
This data shows that a large part of the grain is being consumed only in the last three months of the financial year to take it close to the 100 per cent target. 'As per our records from 1 April to 20 September, Delhi has lifted 3,220 metric tonnes of rice and 3,210 metric tonnes of wheat from various godowns of the FCI,' said Debashish Mishra, deputy general manager of the FCI in Delhi. 'We don't have the separate records of local bodies,' added Mishra. He clarified that the amount allocated to the state bodies by the centre for this scheme is completely disbursed.
Before the financial year 2010-11 the government used to allocated the budget for the meal scheme directly to the civic body through the state government and it used to purchase food directly. The FCI was introduced in the system only in 2010-11. The total fund available with MCD for 2009-10 was Rs 4,185.27 lakh.
Mid-Day Meal Scam: Part-I
Read Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI & Part-VII
In this scam-a-day season, there is hardly anything that shocks us any more. But, imagine the reaction if we are told that the food kept aside for feeding poor students in municipal schools with the hope of increasing their attendance and providing them nutritional support is being looted blatantly. But, sorry to disappoint you if expect a big corporate or political name steering this scam. This is a big swindle that is rooted in the differences in government policy at the centre and municipal levels, with small and medium non-governmental organisations leading the charge, thus making it a form of systemic corruption, rather than a one-off act of dishonesty.
A Millennium Post investigation has revealed that the voluntary organisations engaged to provide mid-day meal to students in Delhi schools are feeding at least two students on the grain allotted for one and siphoning off over half of wheat and rice allocated to them. The investigation reveals that once we calculate the cost saved by the NGOs and add the extra mouths they are feeding with the allocated amount of grain, the scam runs into crores of rupees. A full detail of the size of the scam will be presented in the last part of this series of reports.
Furthermore, most of the A-grade grain received free from the government for this purpose is being sold in the market and poor quality grain is being purchased to replace it. The extent of scam is aggravated by the manipulation of attendance records of students who attend school, and therefore consume mid-day meals, from an actual, more realistic, figure of about 40 to 50 per cent by about 20 to 30 per cent.
What is even more shocking is the fact that teachers and principals of schools are hands in glove with NGOs and babus to save their jobs, as a decrease in the number of students enrolled in these schools brings down the requirement for teachers.
If you want to know how this scam is being executed, you need to look no further than your kitchen. For example, if you use about 100 grams of uncooked, average-quality rice from the market, its weight increases to around 270 to 280 grams when cooked. But, according to the standards of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi [MCDs] in North, South and East zones, the weight of rice item – including cooked rice and either of dal, chole or rajma – should reach the plate of a primary student should be 250 grams in weight. The latter category usually weighs as much as half of this prescribed weight. So, while 100 grams of uncooked grain per student is procured from central agencies, by the time it reaches the student's plate, only half of it is used in the cooked form.
The NGOs provide mid-day meals in containers of 10 kilogrammes each, which contain around nine kilogrammes of cooked rice for 70 to 80 students from the nursery level to Class V in primary schools. Thus, an average student gets a maximum of 120 to 140 grams of cooked rice in their plate along with around 100 to 120 grams of cooked dal, chole or rajma, most of whose content is watery curry. This formula is applicable for classes from the nursery level to Standard V, whose students are between the age groups of 3-4 to 9-10 years, and, therefore, eat less. Over 57,450 students out of a total of 10,05,600 students in the corporation schools are nursery-standard students. Their average age is four years, but the NGOs running the mid-day meal schemes claim 100 grams of grain for them as well while they eat much less.
These NGOs are provided a separate budget for dal, chole or rajma to be served along with cooked rice. But, the 100 grams of A-grade rice per student per meal is directly provided to the meal-delivery agency from the nearest godown of the Food Corporation of India. They pick rice from the godown once in a month and provide meals to students thrice in a week of six working days. Similarly, these NGOs get 100 grams of wheat per student per meal from the government to provide wheat-based items for the remaining three days. As per quantity standards of MCDs, the wheat-based mid-day meal in the plate of a student should weigh 200 grams including one vegetable dish.
The NGOs provide three puris to each student, weighing about 25 grams each, for this category of meal. This meal comes with about 100 to 120 grams of watery potato sabzi or chole. Thus, each student gets around 175 to 180 grams of wheat-based meal on their plate. However, with 100 grams of wheat one can easily make six puris, weighing about 160 grams. To meet the MCD standard of wheat-based meal, one needs to use only half of the wheat obtained from FCI godown. What happens to the rest of it is a story that needs to be told.
Along with free wheat and rice, the central government also gives Rs 3.11 per student per meal as conversion charge to provide dal or sabzi and cooking cost. Besides, Rs 75 per 100 kilogrammes of grain is provided as transportation charge from the godowns of FCI to the kitchens of these NGOs. By not cooking around half of the grain, these NGOs save around half of the conversion charges.
According to the MCD rules, one teacher is appointed for 30 students up to a strength of 200 students enrolled. Over a strength of 200 student, a student-teacher ratio of 1:40 is maintained. Over 70 per cent of teachers in MCD schools are women, who are generally discouraged by their families from working in schools very far from their homes, given their socio-economic conditions. So, it becomes in their interest to inflate the number of students enrolled in their schools who use the mid-day meal scheme facility. For the same reason, they also show that about 60 per cent of the enrolled students attend school and avail the mid-day meal scheme.
The loot in mid-day meal schemes is not just happening at the level of drawing more grain from the Food Corporation of India [FCI] and then supplying only half of it to students. The scam has other layers, which vary from the quality of food served to showing in records those students who never ate the food thus prepared. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies [CSDS], a research institute in Delhi, was made a designated monitoring institute [MI] by the union Ministry of Human Resource Development for the scheme. It has been expressing concerns on lesser quantity and poor quality of food being served in Delhi schools, but all its reports are falling on deaf ears.
'Invariably the quality of meals supplied is not satisfactory, and the quantity too tends to be lesser than prescribed,' observed the team of experts from the CSDS after visiting 87 primary and upper primary schools in Delhi in September to October 2011. Every year, the CSDS sends almost similar report to the central government but not even a single NGO has been penalised in Delhi for playing with the nutritional health of young students.
In its annual report of 2012, the expert committee of the CSDS also mentioned that 70 per cent children did not like halwa served as part of mid-day meals – which is served once in a week – but it is still continued in the menu. And, the main reason, according to sources, is that its input cost is low.
The matter of poor quality and lesser quantity was also raised in the meeting of the Programme Approval Board [PAB] on 3 April 2012, which is a body of the human resource development ministry and was called to allocate food grains and funds for scheme for 2012-13 in Delhi. As per the minutes of the meeting, accessed by Millennium Post, Amarjit Singh, a joint secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy of the central government, raised the issue in the meeting. 'During the recent visit by the central team, it was noted that the food grains at the time of lifting were being received as grade 'A', however, the same quality of food grain did not reach the MDM kitchens, as for example, the available stock of foodgrains in the godown of the centralised kitchen of Maitri Research and Development Foundation in South West Delhi was not of even Fair Average Quality [FAQ],' said Singh in the meeting.
Interestingly, these NGOs have been using all the food grain, both wheat and rice, and the entire budget of the Municipal Corporations of Delhi [MCDs] for this scheme since it was introduced in 2003. In the financial year 2011-12, the MCD – before it was divided into three bodies – was allocated Rs 16,198.02 metric tonnes of grain from the FCI, of which equal amount of wheat and rice was issued. The MCD records show that the complete amount of grain was used by the end of the financial year. The same happened to the cooking cost and conversion charges. As per the report submitted to the PAB by the MCD through the nodal officer of the Delhi government for approval of the next year's budget, only 64 per cent of the total grain was used in the first three quarters from 1 April to 31 December 2011. Surprisingly, the remaining grain was utilised in the next three months and an addition amount of 542.09 metric tonnes was also lifted from the FCI godown.
The total enrolment in MCD schools as on 31 December 2011 was shown to be 9,86,962. It also includes students who enrolled but did not continue going to school regularly. Out of this figure, the schools showed that 6,59,701 students consumed mid-day meals, which, in December 2011, is about 67 per cent of the enrolled students, but it will be far lower number if we take into account the number of students who actually attended schools daily and thus became eligible for consuming mid-day meals. In 2011-12, the central government had set a target of 7,71,336 students for the mid-day meal scheme in MCD schools. The December 2011 figure, thus, becomes almost 86 per cent of the central government-approved number. It shows that there was an attempt by MCD schools to take the number of students having subsidised meals close to the number set by the centre, so that they could claim additional grain in the next quarter.
This data shows that a large part of the grain is being consumed only in the last three months of the financial year to take it close to the 100 per cent target. 'As per our records from 1 April to 20 September, Delhi has lifted 3,220 metric tonnes of rice and 3,210 metric tonnes of wheat from various godowns of the FCI,' said Debashish Mishra, deputy general manager of the FCI in Delhi. 'We don't have the separate records of local bodies,' added Mishra. He clarified that the amount allocated to the state bodies by the centre for this scheme is completely disbursed.
Before the financial year 2010-11 the government used to allocated the budget for the meal scheme directly to the civic body through the state government and it used to purchase food directly. The FCI was introduced in the system only in 2010-11. The total fund available with MCD for 2009-10 was Rs 4,185.27 lakh.