Why Is Jagan Opposing Smart Kitchens for Poor Students?

Mid-Day Meals is one of the very important schemes run by the Governments. This Scheme fulfills the nutritional needs of the Poor Students and also motivates them to study.

The Poor Parents sent their children to schools because their lunch is taken care of. But then, the quality of meals served under this scheme has been a huge problem for years.

Due to the involvement of some greedy teachers, cooks, and agencies, low quality ingredients and less quantities were used for preparation depriving the students of their food.

NDA government has come up with idea of Smart Kitchens to solve this problem. The food will be prepared in these Smart Kitchens and will be supplied to schools located in a region. This is Akshayapatra Model.

If there is strict surveillance in the Smart Kitchens, the Quality Control will be easy. But then, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has started Politics over this too.

He took to X (Twitter) and opposed this idea saying that this will endanger the jobs of 85,000 women working as Cooks in Government Schools. He is demanding that the Government should drop the Smart Kitchens idea and increase the salaries of such Cooks and workers.

This appears shortsighted. Some people may indeed be affected, and their concerns deserve attention. As the Opposition leader, Jagan can certainly demand rehabilitation, alternative employment, or compensation for the cooks who may lose work.

However, opposing the concept of Smart Kitchens itself is difficult to justify if the objective is to provide safer, more hygienic, and standardized meals to lakhs of government school students. Better quality control could also help reduce the risk of food contamination and food poisoning incidents while improving confidence in the mid day meal system.

Lakhs of Students in Government Schools will be benefitted through this as the enrolment in the Government Schools will increase. The burden of School Fees to that extent will be eased on the Parents. The saved money will improve the quality of life of the families.