Cooking begins at 4:30 in the morning in this industrial kitchen in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Workers cook thousands of kilograms of rice, curry and vegetables in giant steel pots, filling the room with steam and the sound of clanging metal. They stir curry with paddles the size of oars. Like clockwork, the food is loaded on to trucks by 7:30am and delivered to 150,000 children in Hyderabad’s schools.
To combat India’s notoriously high malnutrition rates, the government launched a national programme in 2001 to give free meals in schools. This “mid-day meal programme” is no panacea for India’s daunting social problems. But it is credited with at least lifting school enrolment 10-20 per cent in some areas and giving millions of children one good meal a day. “To my mind it’s a starting point,” said Manoj Kumar, chief executive of Naandi.
