Door delivery of midday meal rations in villages

The government has started delivering rations at the doorsteps of people in the villages in place of the mid-day meal scheme that is not operational due to the closure of schools.

Rations that were leftover in the mid-day meal scheme will be delivered through task forces constituted under the gram panchayats.

Karnataka has over 6,000 gram panchayats and there are as many task forces. There are village-level task forces as well.

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“When the lockdown was enforced, 20 days of classes were still left. It was decided that the same quantity of rice and tur dal that would have been served to schoolchildren will now be delivered to the houses of the schoolchildren,” Primary and Secondary Education principal secretary S R Umashankar said.

The Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department has mobilized its Covid-19 task forces to deliver the rations.

“There were delays in some places in delivering the rations, but otherwise, it is going on well,” RDPR (panchayat raj) secretary Uma Mahadevan said. “Zilla Panchayat chief executive officers have been asked to monitor this on a daily basis,” she added.

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Some 42 lakh government schoolchildren were covered under the mid-day meal scheme in the 2019-20 academic year. On an average, the state requires about 1.23 lakh metric tonnes of foodgrains for the scheme.

“To ensure better coordination, we use Telegram as a platform, where all PDOs and other panchayat-level officers are present and reports are shared to check progress,” Uma said. “Some gram panchayats have done exceedingly well during the crisis. For example, the Rajanakunte gram panchayat (Bengaluru) organized a community kitchen.”

The task forces are responsible for the enforcement of the lockdown, implementation of guidelines issued by the Health department, ensure the supply of essential items and that social distancing is followed. They have to create awareness by going around in autorickshaws. “We’ve asked the task forces to use the same autos to deliver the rations,” Uma said.

Additionally, the government has allowed gram panchayats to use the 14th Finance Commission (FC) grants to tackle the pandemic.

“On an average, a gram panchayat gets Rs 30 lakh to Rs 35 lakh a year under the FC. So, we expect a small proportion to be used for this work,” RDPR principal secretary L K Atheeq said.