Friday, July 19, 2013

Another avoidable "accident"

In the state of Bihar, India's school lunch program killed 22 children and sent many more to the hospital after a deadly pesticide got into free lunches provided to children attending a government-run school.

But socialists argue that it was poverty, not poison, that killed these school-children. The contaminated cooking oil was only the murder weapon.

The deprivation of their families made them desperate for the school's free food. Their low rank in society made it impossible for them to demand that it be prepared under safe and hygienic conditions, and ensured they went unheard when complaining of the food’s foul taste. Because they are mired in poverty, their complaints are too often ignored and  were told to eat up when they said the poisoned food smelled funny and tasted bitter,

Right-to-food activist Dipu Sinha told GlobalPost.  “Only 30 percent of the schools in Bihar had any inspection visits over the last year. Obviously, nobody cares if these children get good food.It's a combination of social and economic inequality. Children who access government schools now increasingly come from the poorest sections and from the lower castes. You see this kind of apathy in every government program now.”

 India,  where malnutrition affecting as many as half of Indian children in some states, provides free lunches to more than 100 million children attending government-run and government-aided schools.  But corruption is a common scourge, and stealing food from hungry people is far from rare. Government employees skim from supplies meant for school lunches. Or politicians grant contracts to provide school meals to fraudulent NGOs owned by their relatives or cronies, who do the same.

Over the past six months, more than 350 children have been poisoned by school lunch programs around the country, though until this week there had been only one fatality. In one case from 34 children at a residential school in Maharashtra fell ill from drinking contaminated water.

This tragedy confirmed that, at least for the poor, life in India is nasty and dangerous.

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