The British government is facing the ire of the masses due to a lack of funds for providing free meals to underprivileged school children even when British parliamentarians are wasting tonnes of highly subsidized and public-funded food. In contrast, the Indian government has been providing free mid-day meals to children improving attendance in schools and has ended the food subsidy to parliamentarians.
Due to the rising cost of living crisis in Britain exacerbated by rising fuel prices, many underprivileged children are increasingly finding themselves unable to pay for their food at school. Even the school caterers are cutting meat from the menus due to rising prices. Even staples like potatoes and pasta are expensive.
Jacquie Blake, Laca’s national chair, told the Guardian that many schools are at breaking point as they don’t have the funds to feed vulnerable children.
“Caterers strive to provide hot and nutritious school meals but this is becoming increasingly difficult and is likely to only get worse in the coming months. Too many children are already falling through the cracks – their families cannot afford a paid school meal but they are not eligible for free school meals,” she said to the newspaper.
At the moment, the families of those children earning less than £7,400 a year after tax are eligible for free food. However, the cost of living crisis has forced those earning more than that towards starvation. The government says it is considering raising the sealing to 20,000 pounds.
In India, all children in government-run schools are eligible for mid-day meals.
In a viral video, a lunch lady broke down saying she would have to deny food to several hungry children.”I am a dinner lady in Lancashire and just before the summer holidays when the cost of living crisis really started kicking off. I noticed I spent as much time taking food away from children as I do serving it. I can’t tell children you can’t have the food as you have no money in the account…Children from many low-income families are not eligible for free meals because they are not “poor enough”. With energy prices rising, even more, families will struggle. Nowadays, I have to tell 10-15 children waiting in the queues that they can’t have food and it breaks my heart. It is so humiliating for them… They are like ‘what I am going to eat and I tell them ‘I can’t give you anything. I am dreading going back to work, I am dreading October,” she said, adding, “I didn’t take the job to starve children.”
However, in British Parliament, the government spent millions of pounds to subsidize food for parliamentarians who earn over 80,000 pounds every year. They got around an 11 percent hike this year. The British MPs wasted food that could have provided dinner to 2.6 million people. In 2021, they wasted 1,48,230 kg of food in the House of Commons.In 2020, it was 152,688 kg. In 2019, they wasted 2.6million meals. Had they paid the full price of the food, this amounts to £20.8million.
In India, however, the Central government ended the decades-old practice of providing hefty food subsidies in parliament.
