'Thorns to Competition' - You can order your copy online from here
Tathagata Bhattacharya visits the Vrindaban kitchen of Akshaya Patra Foundation and experiences the workflow that characterises the world's largest free school children feeding programme run by a non-profit organisation
As Narasimha Das, a Lord Krishna devotee, sets out on his daily chore of overseeing operations in a free kitchen in Vrindaban, darkness is the only visible thing. His footsteps pierce the eerie silence of the nippy October night. At 3 am, the kitchen, run by the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a part of the ISKCON movement, is already abuzz with activity. Situated next to the main temple of the complex, the three-floor kitchen is spread over 2200 square feet on each floor. As the strong smell of freshly made roti feels my lungs, I enter the fully automated complex with its complexes of intertwined silos and heavy machinery. It looks like the perfect set for a sci-fi thriller.
On the ground floor, men, covered from head to toe, silently work on mountains of wheat flour and dough. Their task is gargantuan. They have just around five hours to make rotis for 1,69,379 hungry school kids. They lug huge mounds of dough onto a conveyor belt where it is flattened into a thin sheet. The flattened material then moves through a succession of conveyor belts and is cut into big rounds and roasted on both sides. The 30-feet-long machine churns out 40,000 rotis an hour. A qualified design engineer, Das was part of the team that customised a biscuit-making machine into producing 10,000 rotis an hour in 2004. Later in 2009, they upgraded the design on the model of a tortilla-making machine.
Meanwhile, two flights up, the curry cooking army is all steamed up with five industry-sized cauldrons bubbling with rice and dal with fresh vegetables. Kitchen supervisors keep a close watch, armed with nutrition charts and cooking thermometers. Each batch of dals cook for around 20 minutes after which they are sent down through channels at the back of the cauldrons landing straight into sterilised containers in the packing room on the floor below. To ensure hygiene, human handling of food is kept to the minimum. When the rice is cooked, a gear mechanism on the side of the cauldron tilts the rice onto a trolley which is then wheeled onto the mouth of the funnel, through which it lands into sterilised containers. They are then loaded onto the insulated delivery vans waiting outside. These vans will take the food to hungry children studying in over 1516 schools in and around Vrindaban.
In spite of the Indian middle-class's obsession with the country emerging as the next superpower, as if software, Bollywood and Brahmos will see to it, and a jingoistic media's chest thumping, it is a fact that 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children under the age of five live in this country. A recent global hunger index, released this year by the International Food Policy Research Institute, India ranks 67 out of the 84 countries in the fray. India launched the mid day meal scheme as early as in 1960s to address the issues of illiteracy and child malnutrition. The largest school lunch programme in the world is integral to addressing key millennium development goals. In keeping with its importance, the funds for the scheme increased from Rs 3010 crore to 4813 crore in 2006-2007. And Akshaya Patra, a Bangalore-based non-profit organisation, is its largest non-governmental partner with 17 kitchens across 8 states feeding more than 1.26 million children everyday. By 2020, the programme, the largest school lunch programme run by a non-profit organisation, aims to feed 5 million children. Das, head of the Vrindaban operations, tells me the kitchen makes 250,000 rotis, 4 tons of rice, 2 tons of dal and about 6 tons of vegetables everyday. Akshaya Patra’s menu is designed keeping in mind the needs of growing children and local food habits. It consists of rice or rotis and daal or kadhi with vegetables. Desserts come once a week.
Akshaya Patra, subject of a Harvard study in 2007, began feeding 1,500 school children in Bangalore in 2000, a year before the Supreme Court made it mandatory for the government to provide cooked meals to children in all government and government-assisted primary schools.
Soon, pleas started pouring in from teachers of other government schools. “When the letters formed a pile, we opened them to find requests to feed 1,00,000 children. It was an eye-opener as to what a meal, which we take for granted, meant to these children.” Chanchalapati Das, vice-chairman of the foundation says. The first Akshaya Patra kitchen was set up in Bangalore to feed 30,000 children.
An Akshaya Patra delivery van reaches the Gopalgarh Primary School, around 2.5 km from the central kitchen at around 11 am. The children in the classes are busy running through arithmetic tables as the huge containers alight. The organisation started its operations in Vrindaban in 2006 from this school. Laxmi Binodini, the Bengali-speaking head mistress, says that attendance has increased manifold after the meals were served in her school. An Akshaya Patra survey shows that since its kitchen started functioning in Vrindaban in 2006, the number of underweight children dropped from 38 per cent to 26. Binodini’s school had 120 children in 2006. Now she has more than 200. The number of girls has doubled. “Parents now have an incentive to send their girls to school. Previously they would be taken off to do household chores,” she says. The lunch bell rings, the children queue out.
Back in the kitchen, work is never over. The workers are busy, preparing for the next day. Akshaya Patra has received accolades from all around the world and request to intervene in other needy parts of the world. But the organisation is firmly focussed on India. “We have enough hungry children to feed here,” Dasa says.
The world's largest free school kids meal programme has been described by Barack Obama as a “powerful demonstration of what’s possible when people work together.” It is an example of the success of the public-private partnership model, with 65 per cent of its funds provided by the Centre.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM ranks No 1 in International Exposure in the 'Third Mail Today B-School Survey'
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri Dean Business School IIPM
IIPM Excom Prof Rajita Chaudhuri
Kapil Sibal’s voters want Jan Lokpal, not Government-proposed Lokpal Bill
IIPM: What is E-PAT?
"Thorns to Competition" amongst the top 10 best sellers of the week.
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
IIPM, GURGAON
Tathagata Bhattacharya visits the Vrindaban kitchen of Akshaya Patra Foundation and experiences the workflow that characterises the world's largest free school children feeding programme run by a non-profit organisation
As Narasimha Das, a Lord Krishna devotee, sets out on his daily chore of overseeing operations in a free kitchen in Vrindaban, darkness is the only visible thing. His footsteps pierce the eerie silence of the nippy October night. At 3 am, the kitchen, run by the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a part of the ISKCON movement, is already abuzz with activity. Situated next to the main temple of the complex, the three-floor kitchen is spread over 2200 square feet on each floor. As the strong smell of freshly made roti feels my lungs, I enter the fully automated complex with its complexes of intertwined silos and heavy machinery. It looks like the perfect set for a sci-fi thriller.
On the ground floor, men, covered from head to toe, silently work on mountains of wheat flour and dough. Their task is gargantuan. They have just around five hours to make rotis for 1,69,379 hungry school kids. They lug huge mounds of dough onto a conveyor belt where it is flattened into a thin sheet. The flattened material then moves through a succession of conveyor belts and is cut into big rounds and roasted on both sides. The 30-feet-long machine churns out 40,000 rotis an hour. A qualified design engineer, Das was part of the team that customised a biscuit-making machine into producing 10,000 rotis an hour in 2004. Later in 2009, they upgraded the design on the model of a tortilla-making machine.
Meanwhile, two flights up, the curry cooking army is all steamed up with five industry-sized cauldrons bubbling with rice and dal with fresh vegetables. Kitchen supervisors keep a close watch, armed with nutrition charts and cooking thermometers. Each batch of dals cook for around 20 minutes after which they are sent down through channels at the back of the cauldrons landing straight into sterilised containers in the packing room on the floor below. To ensure hygiene, human handling of food is kept to the minimum. When the rice is cooked, a gear mechanism on the side of the cauldron tilts the rice onto a trolley which is then wheeled onto the mouth of the funnel, through which it lands into sterilised containers. They are then loaded onto the insulated delivery vans waiting outside. These vans will take the food to hungry children studying in over 1516 schools in and around Vrindaban.
In spite of the Indian middle-class's obsession with the country emerging as the next superpower, as if software, Bollywood and Brahmos will see to it, and a jingoistic media's chest thumping, it is a fact that 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children under the age of five live in this country. A recent global hunger index, released this year by the International Food Policy Research Institute, India ranks 67 out of the 84 countries in the fray. India launched the mid day meal scheme as early as in 1960s to address the issues of illiteracy and child malnutrition. The largest school lunch programme in the world is integral to addressing key millennium development goals. In keeping with its importance, the funds for the scheme increased from Rs 3010 crore to 4813 crore in 2006-2007. And Akshaya Patra, a Bangalore-based non-profit organisation, is its largest non-governmental partner with 17 kitchens across 8 states feeding more than 1.26 million children everyday. By 2020, the programme, the largest school lunch programme run by a non-profit organisation, aims to feed 5 million children. Das, head of the Vrindaban operations, tells me the kitchen makes 250,000 rotis, 4 tons of rice, 2 tons of dal and about 6 tons of vegetables everyday. Akshaya Patra’s menu is designed keeping in mind the needs of growing children and local food habits. It consists of rice or rotis and daal or kadhi with vegetables. Desserts come once a week.
Akshaya Patra, subject of a Harvard study in 2007, began feeding 1,500 school children in Bangalore in 2000, a year before the Supreme Court made it mandatory for the government to provide cooked meals to children in all government and government-assisted primary schools.
Soon, pleas started pouring in from teachers of other government schools. “When the letters formed a pile, we opened them to find requests to feed 1,00,000 children. It was an eye-opener as to what a meal, which we take for granted, meant to these children.” Chanchalapati Das, vice-chairman of the foundation says. The first Akshaya Patra kitchen was set up in Bangalore to feed 30,000 children.
An Akshaya Patra delivery van reaches the Gopalgarh Primary School, around 2.5 km from the central kitchen at around 11 am. The children in the classes are busy running through arithmetic tables as the huge containers alight. The organisation started its operations in Vrindaban in 2006 from this school. Laxmi Binodini, the Bengali-speaking head mistress, says that attendance has increased manifold after the meals were served in her school. An Akshaya Patra survey shows that since its kitchen started functioning in Vrindaban in 2006, the number of underweight children dropped from 38 per cent to 26. Binodini’s school had 120 children in 2006. Now she has more than 200. The number of girls has doubled. “Parents now have an incentive to send their girls to school. Previously they would be taken off to do household chores,” she says. The lunch bell rings, the children queue out.
Back in the kitchen, work is never over. The workers are busy, preparing for the next day. Akshaya Patra has received accolades from all around the world and request to intervene in other needy parts of the world. But the organisation is firmly focussed on India. “We have enough hungry children to feed here,” Dasa says.
The world's largest free school kids meal programme has been described by Barack Obama as a “powerful demonstration of what’s possible when people work together.” It is an example of the success of the public-private partnership model, with 65 per cent of its funds provided by the Centre.
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM ranks No 1 in International Exposure in the 'Third Mail Today B-School Survey'
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri Dean Business School IIPM
IIPM Excom Prof Rajita Chaudhuri
Kapil Sibal’s voters want Jan Lokpal, not Government-proposed Lokpal Bill
IIPM: What is E-PAT?
"Thorns to Competition" amongst the top 10 best sellers of the week.
IIPM RANKED NO.1 in MAIL TODAY B-SCHOOL RANKINGS
IIPM, GURGAON
No comments:
Post a Comment