India will be hunger-free much before 2047: Akshay Patra co-founder

Listing the midday meal programme, the Anganwadi programme, and other programmes, Chanchalapathi Dasa said India has a lot of good programmes to address hunger.

Washington: India will be hunger-free much before its targeted year of 2047, the co-founder of the Akshaya Patra Foundation, Chanchalapathi Dasa, has said, citing the significant strides made by the world's most populous country in this field.

Dasa was in the US recently to participate in a UN event in New York to commemorate the Akshaya Patra Foundation's milestone of serving four billion meals.

“I think, even well before that,” Dasa told PTI in an interview when asked if India could achieve a zero-hunger goal by 2047 when it celebrates the 100 years of its independence from British colonial rule.

“Zero hunger will not be such a big challenge for India. It is a challenge. I'm not oversimplifying it, but India has made significant strides,” he said.

Listing the midday meal programme, the Anganwadi programme, and other programmes, Dasa said India has a lot of good programmes to address hunger. 'I think we are doing very well for a large country like ours,” he said.

“We have seen that seriousness about feeding children, educating them, and providing nutritious and safe food is there across all parties and governments. That's a very, very encouraging thing, and we are making great progress in our country, I would say,” he said in response to a question.

Headquartered in Bangalore, the Akshaya Patra Foundation was recently felicitated at the UN headquarters in New York for achieving the Four Billion Meals Milestone under PM POSHAN Abhiyaan. It began serving meals in 2000, and by 2024, it emerged as the world’s largest school meal programme.

“One-twenty million children are benefited by this programme. This programme had different kinds of implementation methods,' he said.

'The last 20 years has been a cooked meal programme. In every school, a kitchen is set up. There are one, two, or three people involved in cooking food. The school headmaster only supervises this, and the teachers supervise, and they prepare meals and distribute them to the children,” he said.

“In our country, which has a very diverse and very big population of 1.4 billion people, even (in) very well-conceived, very well-funded, very well-planned programmes, the challenge for the government is implementation. In our country, there are very good welfare programmes. The challenge is the implementation because of the complexities that are involved,” he said.

The mid-day meal programme, he said, has done wonders all over the country.

'There is immense talent in our country, (and) that is the strength of our country. That is why we say that this midday meal programme is not an expenditure, but it is an investment in human resource development of the country,” Dasa said.

Referring to the UN meeting diplomats from over 40 countries attended, Dasa said they were all very fascinated to hear about such a large programme of India.

“It is unprecedented; nowhere in the world is it happening to this scale, and from the government's performance point of view and an NGO's performance point of view, in both respects, there was a lot of appreciation,” he said.

During the event, he said, “We are happy to share the model, our experiences and work with governments. If the government invites us, we are happy to set up a kitchen and run it for them.” 'I think there is a lot of interest, and we will pursue all these requests that have come and these invitations; if some of them are rectified, we'll be happy to participate and share the Akshay Patra model and our experience for the benefit of children in those countries also,” Dasa said.