India: The specious arguments against eggs (Swati Narayan)

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The anti-egg arguments smack of sanskritized notions of vegetarianism

Swati Narayan

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s myopic refusal to serve eggs to schoolchildren in highly malnourished districts has stirred a hornet’s nest.
Eggs are nutritional super-foods. They are easy to store, cook, serve and digest. They may be unacceptable to vegetarian lobbies and animal rights activists but neither the central government nor several state governments have made any sincere attempts in schools and anganwadis (child and mother care centres) to invest in vegetarian alternatives, even if nutritionally they are not a patch on eggs.
Instead, finance minister Arun Jaitley has this year, at a time when the prices of pulses are soaring, slashed the budget for school meals by a third and anganwadis by more than half.
Previously, the central government paid for most of the meals and states added the extras such as milk, fruits and eggs. But with the 14th Finance Commission’s devolution, although states will now receive more of the central tax revenue, their motivation to enrich meals has been severely dampened.
So, in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, eggs and even vegetables are likely to go off the menu. In Goa, a plan to introduce seasonal fruits in schools has been shelved. When Smriti Irani took over the ministry of human resource development even promised to introduce buttermilk, but since then there has not been a murmur on this front.
Gujarat is the state which has pioneered India’s dairy revolution. But despite worsening child malnutrition, the white revolution hasn’t flooded schools and anganwadis apart from those in tribal districts. Rajasthan has even started the world’s first ministry for cow protection and banned beef, but there are no dairy products in children’s school dishes.
Puducherry—a Union territory—is the only one to serve boiled milk for school breakfast and eggs for lunch. Karnataka offers powdered milk twice a week and Rajasthan a measly banana once a week.
Worse, for younger anganwadi children who are the most vulnerable to malnutrition, apart from eggs (and fruits for vegetarians) virtually no state, offers any unprocessed, nutritive side dishes.
Instead the repeated thrust is in favour of packaged foods. In Jharkhand, which has the second highest levels of malnutrition in the country, ready-to-eat meals are served to children under three years of age. Harsimran Kaur, in her early days in the food processing ministry had invited PepsiCo to introduce processed foods in school meals, though the move was squashed. Previously, even the biscuit lobby tried to influence members of Parliament across party lines for a slice of India’s $1 billion school meal pie.
Indian children are amongst the most malnourished in the world, worse than in sub-Saharan Africa. But a 2013 Oxford University study Catch-up growth and Midday Meals based on longitudinal evidence from Andhra Pradesh shows that with nutritious school meals, malnutrition can be reversed.
Under the National Food Security Act, 2013, freshly cooked lunches in government schools and additional morning snack in anganwadis are now legal rights. But studies show that their nutritive content needs to be boosted. Further, the National Sample Survey 2011-12 points to a nationwide decline in the consumption of fruits, vegetables and protein.
But caste prejudice is an unspoken barrier.
The anti-egg arguments smack of sanskritized notions of vegetarianism. On the other hand, Tamil Nadu serves eggs 5 days a week and has pioneered school meals, in part due to its socially transformative Dravidian movement.
Almost every second child in India is malnourished. Children love eggs, but poor families can rarely afford one. They are rich in all essential nutrients (sans vitamin C) and less susceptible to contamination. Eggs are certainly not Maggi. With few alternative super-foods on the menu, it is important that eggs be introduced in school meals. They should not be banned.
Swati Narayan is a research scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.