Friday, December 30, 2011

[ZESTCaste] Dalit cook: Students skip midday meal

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/bengaluru/dalit-cook-students-skip-midday-meal-653

Dalit cook: Students skip midday meal

December 31, 2011
DC
Shimoga

This could come as a rude shock to those who believed that caste
barriers were on the decline in modern India. Students of the
government lower primary school at Yelige near Tumari in Sagar taluk
have not been accepting the free mid-day meals for the past eight
years. Reason: the woman cook belongs to the Dalit community! Of the
16 students, only 7 have been taking the food provided at the school.
Yelige is a remote village in the backwater region of Sharavathi
valley.

Teachers expressed their helplessness saying that four of the students
belonged to the Schedule Castes while the remaining students were not
keen on having the mid-day meals despite the efforts made to convince
them. When asked about this, a class five student said, "The cooks are
from a lower caste, so we do not eat the food served by them." Another
student said, "Parents scold us, so we decided not to have the meals."

According to school sources, the cook Ms Padmavati was appointed as
chief cook at ther school under the Akshara Dasoha scheme in 2004. But
later, villagers of Yelige and some parents objected to the
appointment and appealed to the then health and family welfare
minister Kagodu Thimmappa to stall her appointment as students of both
upper and lower castes study at the school. Since then, most of the
students have stayed away from the mid-day meal scheme except for
seven who are having the food. According to a Dalit leader, Manjappa,
all students would have accepted the mid-day meal if their parents had
not put pressure on them not to accept the meals.


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