After a large feast at Mayapur, West Bengal, when Srila Prabupada, founder of the ISKCON movement, witnessed the heartrending scene of a small girl competing with dogs for food in a garbage bin, he was shellshocked. His immediate response was to instruct his disciples to ensure that nobody within 10 km of the Hare Krishna temple should ever go hungry. So started the massive distribution of prasadam to everyone in Mayapur and soon spread to various parts of the country.

But, Madhupandita Das, president of ISKCON, Bangalore, went a step further in interpreting the instructions of his revered Guru. Realising the prime role of nutrition in education, he decided to feed hungry school children in government schools. His first target was a school in Peenya, where children carried home the 3 kilo rice packet given out by the Government only to be sold by the grown ups at home to buy liquor. He requested the school authorities to allow them to serve cooked food free of cost to children everyday. An elated principal agreed to the proposal and thus laid the foundation for Akshaya Patra, a secular, charitable organisation that offers unlimited, nutrition-rich food everyday to deserving school children through an extremely cost-effective process.

The inception of the free midday meal programme and its subsequent success attracted so much attention that every school in the vicinity of the Hare Krishna temple wanted to be a beneficiary. New additions to the list of schools where the midday meal was served, the enthusiastic response of school authorities, the satisfied smiles of children, high attendance rate, marginal reduction in school drop-out rate and the positive backing of the State Government enthused the team of Madhupandita Das to extend the facility to as many schools as possible. This was way back in 2000.

Today, seven years down the line, Akshaya Patra enjoys the distinction of feeding over eight lakh children in over 2,000 government schools in ten locations across India. In Karnataka alone, the Akshaya Patra programme has been a grand success in the districts of Hubli-Dharwad, Bellary, Mysore and Mangalore.

Says Chanchalapathi Das, Vice President, ISKCON Bangalore, and Vice Chairman, The Akshaya Patra Foundation, “The mission of Akshaya Patra Foundation is to ensure that no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.”

Stressing on the importance of nutrition in the cognitive development of children, Mr Das says, “To most children in government schools, Akshaya Patra meal is the only complete meal they get in a day.”

Hence, Akshaya Patra serves children a complete meal designed on the basis of growing children’s nutritional requirements, in consultation with nutritional experts. A regular Akshaya Patra meal consists of rice, vegetable sambar and curds. This is not all. Once a week, children are also served special rice items to introduce variety.
If this is the menu for children in the South, children in the North are served chapathis, dal and a rice item. “Our aim is to provide children wholesome food, food they are used to,” adds Mr Das.

The aim of Akshaya Patra is to make school-going experience enjoyable to children, stresses Mr Das, quoting an instance when a teacher thanked him for having introduced the programme in their school as children now looked attentive and exhibited interest in studying.

The programme, provided only in government, corporation and government-aided schools that have a secular policy for admission, has attracted world attention. While students from the Harvard Business School came down to study the uniqueness and the efficacy of the programme, The World Economic Forum invited members of the Foundation to share their experiences.

Managed by an independent board of trustees including the who’s who of the State and audited by KPMG, the programme is run with part subsidies from the government, besides financial support from corporates and individual philanthropists.

For instance, Sudha Murthy, the chairperson of Infosys Foundation, expressed her willingness to be a part of the programme and set up the largest ever kitchen in the entire country in Hubli, that is at present serving meals to over one lakh eighty thousand children studying in over 650 government schools spread across the districts of Hubli-Dharwad and Haveri since July 2004.

So is the case in Bellary, where the JSW Foundation has come forward to support the programme and has subleased land for the setting up of a kitchen. Right now, over 62,230 children are benefiting from the programme in Bellary district alone, says Mr Das.

While the Foundation has extended its facilities to schools in Mysore and Mangalore also, serving about 7,200 and 14,260 children respectively, it plans to expand further only after the setting up of a larger kitchen with a greater cooking capacity.

Driven by the zeal to extend the Foundation’s facilities to the needy and the deserving in various sections of the society, Akshaya Patra has partnered with the BMP for the programme ‘Sanjeevini’, to supply free nutritious food to expectant and nursing mothers from poor families. This is not all. The Foundation supplies free nutritious food to senior citizens too. Since May this year, they are also supplying food to jail inmates.

However, the driving force behind the programme continues to be children.

“The Foundation aims to scale up the programme to serve one million children by 2010. Eventually, the dream is to ensure that no child in India is left out and every child has equitable access to food, education and health,” says Mr Das.

So be it, shall we say?
All contributions to the Foundation are eligible for 100% tax deduction. For details, contact: 91-80-23578622, 23471956.

A view of the kitchen facility of Akshaya Patra programme is interesting, to say the least. Employing technology to maximise efficiency and minimise cost, time and labour, the kitchens are spic and span.
With huge steel cauldrons, automated vegetable cutting machines, steam boilers, exhaust system, conveyor system and the like, care is taken to ensure minimal human intervention and high standards of cleanliness and hygiene.

In fact, Akshaya Patra’s kitchens can cook about 1,00,000 meals in less than five hours!

The logistics of the programme is also worth a mention as custom-built vehicles transport food to schools. Each vehicle is accompanied by security personnel who ensure safe delivery of cooked food to designated schools.
Each vehicle supplies meals to about 10 to 15 schools and on its return trip picks up the empty containers.

Digest this
* India has the second largest education system in the world.

* 72 million children aged between 5 & 14 years do not have access to basic education.
* 63% of them go to bed hungry & 53% suffer from chronic malnutrition.

* A 2006 Report Card on Nutrition by UNICEF estimates that one in three of the world's malnourished children live in India.
*According to Professor Jean Dreaze, professor of Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics, midday meals is the most powerful incentive to attract children to school.

Other activities
*The Foundation trains other NGOs to take up midday meal programmes and other child and education related programmes.

* Conducts teacher training programmes in association with the IISC, Regional Institute of English and the Directorate of State Educational Research and Training.

*Gives out scholarships to meritorious students.

* Provides medical assistance to children and distributes de-worming tablets and nutritional supplements like Vitamin A and Folic acid.