The West Bengal government’s decision to ask 500 schools to “arrange eggs themselves” for mid-day meals exposes the chaos behind good intentions.
Till now, eggs were supplied by self-help groups. Now, with ISKCON taking over meal delivery for 500 schools and promising only vegetarian food, the state is outsourcing nutrition.
Schools have been told to use composite grant funds meant for infrastructure to buy eggs and even LPG cylinders to boil them. Reimbursement is promised. Clarity is not.
This is bad governance. You cannot shift nutritional responsibility to headmasters and expect efficiency. Schools are not procurement agencies. They are meant to teach. Asking them to negotiate with vendors, manage LPG, and maintain accounts for eggs will only distract from education.
The timing is worse. The government just announced a ₹296 crore corpus for school infrastructure. Now the same money is being diverted for dal and eggs. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Nutrition is not negotiable. For millions of children, mid-day meals are the only balanced diet they get. Cutting eggs or making access uncertain hits the most vulnerable first.
If the state wants vegetarian meals, it must fund them properly. If it wants eggs, it must ensure a centralized, transparent supply chain, not dump the problem on schools and SHGs.
Announcing policies without logistics is how schemes fail. Bengal did this once with ration shops. It cannot afford to do it again with children’s plates.
The government must withdraw this ad-hoc order. Issue a formal notification. Create a dedicated fund for protein in meals. And most importantly, stop treating nutrition as a political or religious issue. A child’s stomach does not care who supplies the egg.