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Karnataka government has done right thing by adding eggs to mid-day meals

🔴 The B S Bommai government must stand firm in its decision — and not sacrifice children’s future to appease sectarian interests.

Karnataka is an outlier in south India, the only state that has not added eggs to its mid-day meal menu, despite the fact that a large majority of its people have no cultural aversion to eating non-vegetarian food.Karnataka is an outlier in south India, the only state that has not added eggs to its mid-day meal menu, despite the fact that a large majority of its people have no cultural aversion to eating non-vegetarian food.

With 35 per cent children under the age of five stunted and nearly 20 per cent wasted (according to the National Family Health Survey-5), Karnataka has a malnutrition problem. Historically, the crisis has been more alarming in the poorer northern regions of the state — the figures for stunting in Koppal (49 per cent) and Yadgir (57.6 per cent) districts, for instance, are disturbingly high for a relatively affluent state. The Karnataka government has done what science recommends — turned to the egg, a food that has few peers (whether milk or bananas) in delivering a nutrition-packed punch of protein, calcium, and vitamins at one go. From this month, boiled eggs have been added to the school mid-day meal menu in seven districts (Ballari, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Koppal, Raichur, Vijayapura and Yadgir), which the NFHS data (and other recent studies) have red-flagged for their exceptionally poor nutrition levels. And so, it is worrying that the state government appears to be wavering in its resolve in the face of objections by seers and religious heads of various mutts.

Karnataka is an outlier in south India, the only state that has not added eggs to its mid-day meal menu, despite the fact that a large majority of its people have no cultural aversion to eating non-vegetarian food. Earlier efforts in 2007 and 2015 to introduce eggs in the mid-day meals were similarly thwarted by the powerful veto of dominant caste and religious interests. The seers’ argument — that serving eggs to children in schools discriminates against those who do not eat them — is unreasonable, given that provisions have been made to serve bananas to children from vegetarian homes. Indeed, eggs are already served to pregnant and lactating women, and severely malnourished and wasted children, in anganwadis across the state — without any ripples of social disharmony.

Food is, of course, tied to questions of identity and privilege. But, increasingly, bitter contestations over non-vegetarian food, whether eggs or beef, are being used to license violence against certain communities and enforce a myth of India as a vegetarian nation. Such bias has disastrous consequences if it creeps into policy in a country that is struggling to deliver nourishment to its children. Why should the short-sighted concerns of Karnataka’s seers be allowed to dictate public policy? The B S Bommai government must stand firm in its decision — and not sacrifice children’s future to appease sectarian interests.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on December 14, 2021 under the title ‘The good egg’.

First uploaded on: 14-12-2021 at 03:33 IST
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