Kamal Nath government’s egg proposal for children may fail April 1 test

NEW DELHI: The proposal by the Kamal Nath-led Congress government to distribute eggs to the children of Madhya Pradesh from April 1 is unlikely to see the light of the day. The move, announced last year, has been rejected by the state’s finance department.
To make the matters worse, state’s women and children development minister Imarti Devi, who was among those who rooted for the proposal, has rebelled against the Congress government, reaffirming her loyalty to Jyotiraditya Scindia, who has defected to BJP.

The finance department has refused to allocate any extra funds for the proposal and asked the WCD department to work with its existing budget. “There is no clarity on when the budget, that was initially expected to be on April 8, will be held,” an official said.

According to some others, the proposal met its first roadblock when the anti-egg lobby backed by several religious organisations met ministers and bureaucrats. They suggested alternatives such as bananas, fox nuts, dalia among others for children.

“Some of them also threatened social boycott if they changed the nature of the state that for years has followed sanatana dharma... After that, every proposal sent by WCD for the scheme was nitpicked and officials were told that funds have to be managed with the department’s existing budget,” another state official said.

The matter, said the official, was also discussed at a recent meeting the CM had with Digamber guru Acharya Ishwar Chandra in Indore. After the meeting, the matter was never taken up. The lack of movement on the proposal was raised by several tribals MPs and MLAs of the state at a recent Tribal Advisory Council meeting.

BJP, on its part, has maintained its stiff opposition to eggs. Gopal Bhargava, leader of opposition in the MP assembly, had said: “Eating nonveg food is prohibited in sanatan sanskriti. If we have nonveg from our childhood, we might grow up to become man-eaters.”

Public health experts have for long batted over eggs as a source of quality protein as milk can be adulterated and there are quality control issues with lentils. “The demand for eggs has been decades-old as unlike pulses or milk, eggs cannot be adulterated, can be counted, preserved and transported,” said Sachin Jain, a Bhopal-based foods rights analyst, adding: “They have money to have an extravaganza such as Namaste Orchha but they don’t want to address an issue like malnutrition of children.”

Development activist Reetika Khera said the move would be shocking to children in MP. She said it would be unfair to children in MP, if after committing months ago, the proposal to provide eggs in anganwadis is scuttled now either due to political instability or lame financial excuses.

"At a time when a state like Kerala has arranged for food to be supplied to children at their homes in the wake of the corona virus pandemic, all states should consider giving eggs as Take-Home rations (THR). Eggs are very well suited for this purpose due to their long shelf life and Odisha has already demonstrated that this is logistically possible," she added.

As of now, while Tamil Nadu (five eggs per week in schools and three in anganwadis), Andhra Pradesh (five in schools and four in anganwadis), Telangana (three in schools and seven in anganwadis), Odisha (two in schools and five in anganwadis) and West Bengal (two each in schools and anganwadis) have been pro-eggs, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat states do not have it on the menu for children. EOM