With the Government of India announcing that the national Mid-Day Meal Scheme will now be called PM POSHAN Scheme, another two programmes to come to the fore were 'Tithi Bhojan' and 'Vidyanjali'. The same programmes that Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister of State for Education Dr Subhas Sarkar and other officials of the Ministry of Education sat down to deliberate on yesterday. It was Dharmendra Pradhan who tweeted about the same on Monday and went on to add that, "By making them (the two programmes) society-led mass movements, we aim to achieve better nutrition and better learning outcomes for our students."
So what are these community-level programmes that will enable citizens to contribute to the nutritional levels and overall health of students? Let's find out.
Tithi Bhojan
Tithi Bhojan is when on a particular 'tithi', meaning date in Hindi, or special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries or festivals, members from the general public opt to provide a nutrition-packed meal, or an additional component to the mid day meal itself, to children. First introduced in Gujarat, since the year 2014, talks have been on to replicate the model and adopt it at a national level. Strictly, it only supplements or complements the already existing scheme.
In the initial guidelines, it was the District Collectors who were to involve religious, charitable organisations or NGOs to provide fruits, milk, sweets, eggs, biscuits, halwa (a sweet) or any other additional component to the meal. In case of a full meal, a balanced combination of cereals, pulses and vegetables needed to be provided. Upon the encouragement of the centre, many states were already replicating the model, 11 of them to be exact. While states like Chandigarh and Uttarakhand stuck to the original name, Karnataka called it Karnataka Shalegagi Naavu Neevu, Assam termed it as Sampriti Bhojan and so on. A point to note is that in Kannada, Tithi also means offerings made in the memory of the dead. Thus, calling it the perils of direct adoption of Hindi in Central schemes, many Tweeple are taking a dig at it.
Vidyanjali
It was on September 7, on the occasion of Shikshak Parv, that PM Narendra Modi launched Vidyanjali 2.0, a portal that urges volunteers, NGOs and CSRs to come forward and help schools in every and any way possible. This was done in a bid to increase community and corporate participation in schools. Broadly speaking, the website encourages two ways in which one can participate — by participating in a service or activity at the school and by donating any assets, materials or equipment.
Under the services or activities, all one needs to do is select the location which is most convenient to them. From there on, there are two levels of activities. Generic level activities include mentoring, exam preparation, teaching various subjects, assisting children with special needs or adult education while sponsorship activities entail sponsoring medical camps, counsellors, additional manpower, classes by experts and so on.
When it comes to donations, one can give for basic digital, civil or electric infrastructure, teaching/learning material, maintenance/repairs, office needs and beyond.
