In 2021, three in four people in India could not afford a healthy diet. In South Asia, the pandemic disrupted work and disproportionately impacted poorer families.
Following the pandemic in 2020, the Indira Rasoi Yojana [now called Shree Annapurna Rasoi Yojana] was started by the Congress-led government in Rajasthan to provide subsidised nutritious meals for the urban poor.
Imediately after the pandemic-induced lockdown, Khera (along with Jean Drèze and Meghana Mungikar) had highlighted the exclusion of 100 million people from the government’s subsidised food grain programme which has more than 800 million beneficiaries. It is exacerbated by the indefinite delay in the population Census 2021, she said.
As India votes for the 18th Lok Sabha, we speak with Khera on various social security schemes including maternity entitlements, healthcare, food-related welfare like community kitchens, which are important in the context of the decline in real wages.
Amma’s canteens in Tamil Nadu were the first “on scale” initiative and were set up in 2013 (there have been such initiatives even before that). After this, Indira canteens were set up in Karnataka. Most recently, and perhaps overtaking these two states in terms of scale, was Rajasthan’s Indira Rasoi scheme that began in 2020 in response to the humanitarian crisis created by the Covid-19 lockdown. In November 2023, there were more than 1,100 Indira Rasois in Rajasthan. These canteens provide breakfast/lunch and dinner at Rs 3 to Rs 8 per plate.
Canteens have fostered the creation of democratic spaces in deeply divided (on caste and class lines) societies. One of the most remarkable was a canteen near a hospital in Jaipur where we saw patients, doctors, lab technicians and cleaning staff among others, eating in the same place.
by Shreehari Paliath, IndiaSpend
09/05/2024