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Mid-day meal: student target pegged at 14 cr.

BHUBANESWAR: India is targeting to feed 14 crore students everyday under mid-day-meal (MDM) by the end of this fiscal, the biggest lunch programme in the world, said Union secretary for school education and literacy Arun Kumar Rath here on Monday. Hailing the national flagship programme, Mr. Rath said, “we are aiming at near impossible target of reaching out to14 crore children this year from 9 crore last year under the programme.” He was speaking at “Consultation on achieving SSA (Sarva Sikhya Abhiyan) goals in Orissa: Emerging role of civil society and government”, jointly organised city-based Human Development Foundation (HDF) and Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) here.

The MDM programme was the main reason behind the decline in school dropout rate. “In 2004-05, the school dropout rate was estimated at 40 per cent. Now it has come down to 20 per cent. The retention rate in higher classes in schools has also shown improvement,” Mr. Rath said.

Pointing out that childhood hunger and lack of nutrition among students are major causes for dropout in the country, the Union Secretary said the MDM programme was possible due to funds accrued from 2 per cent cess by all state governments and union territories. To improve and maintain quality of education, the Union government was trying to bring more schools into the fold of CBSE pattern, Mr. Rath said.

Emphasising on girls’ education, he said major problem would be solved if girls could be driven to classroom.

“We want to develop girl-friendly classroom. There is a drive to increase the number of woman teachers. At present, 43 per cent of total teachers in the country are women. We want to increase the percentage to 50.”

Mr. Rath said the situation was slowly improving as girls were coming to schools in great numbers in Kashmir region, which had a predominantly conservative society. There should be more convergence in elementary education and elder siblings should be encouraged to bring their younger ones to Anganwadis.

Speaking at the programme, State UNICEF representative Shadrack Omol said India might run out of quantity of qualified manpower to run its economy, which was poised to grow several times by 2050. “Unless we address the concerns of teachers, it does not matter how much fund would be pumped into or how many school and classroom we would be building,” he said. Among others former Chief Secretary S. B Mishra, Secretary SC, backward and minorities development Tara Dutt were present on the occasion.

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