Nine in 10 schools in Bihar offer mid-day meals without kitchen infrastructure

Nine out of every 10 state government schools in Bihar up to the upper primary level provide mid-day meals to students, but only a tenth of these have a kitchen shed for cooking food, according to official statistics.

Kitchen infrastructure includes storage facilities for grains and other ingredients so they do not mix, and also provides proper ventilation in the kitchen and smokeless stoves.

But statistics released by the District Information System on Education (DISE) show Bihar lags behind other states on this front, with nine in every 10 schools in states like Tamil Nadu having kitchen infrastructure.

The mid-day meal scheme aims at increasing enrolment, reducing the number of school dropouts while also improving the nutritional status of children and encouraging socialisation across all castes and religion.
 

Besides Bihar, Goa (3.66 per cent), Delhi (6.39 per cent) and Jammu & Kashmir (1.62 per cent) have also failed to provide adequate kitchen infrastructure in schools. As per DISE data, Bihar is ranked among the worst-performing states when it comes to providing infrastructure, including kitchen sheds, toilets and drinking water facility at both primary and upper primary schools. The tables below attest to this fact.