Tribal students in Odisha village forced to walk 20 km for bag of rice in lieu of cooked mid-day meals

Tribal students in Odisha's Nagada village, in the Jajpur district, have to walk about 20 km from their schools to fetch their daily mid-day meal rice. This is troublesome not just for the students but also for the parents who have now urged the government to intervene.

There is a primary school in the village where students can study up to Class V. In order to study any further, the students are enrolled in the Deogaon Upper Primary School, located at Deogaon village, which is about 10 km away from Nagada. There are about 53 tribal students in this school and 16 of them are from Nagada, 9 are from Guhiasal and 28 are from Tumini.

A parent of a female student at the Deogaon school, Kandra Pradhan, said, "Our houses are 10 km away from the school. My daughter starts her day at 7 am and returns home at 4 pm, carrying a rice bag on her head. My small child covers a distance of 20 km (to and fro) on foot without any shoes." On October 28, The New Indian Express witnessed, firsthand, over 30 students from the same school walking with heavy rice bags on their heads. 

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The District Education Officer, Ranjan Kumar Giri, said that after COVID hit, the government has instructed them to distribute rice to students in lieu of cooked mid-day meals. He said, "There is an instruction from the government to provide rice to the students as mid-day meals are banned in schools in the wake of the COVID pandemic." 

The officer pointed out that, "the government has asked either the student or their guardian to come to the school to collect the rice as there is no provision of home delivery." However, he said in the case of students of the Deogaon school, he will make an effort to supply rice to the students from their village school in the coming days.