In Maharashtra, take-away rations for malnourished children taste of corruption

The more things change, the more they remain the same. This certainly is true of scams that continue despite a regime change in governments. The current controversy over “take-home rations” in Maharashtra, where Women & Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde has been accused of permitting substandard food to be doled out to vulnerable infants, pregnant women and adolescent girls, harks back to similar accusations against the Congress-NCP government in the state.

The Congress and other opposition parties have accused Munde’s department of floating a Rs6,300 crore tender for the supply of ready-to-cook food to 40 lakh recipients in 70 blocks —  as against 553 blocks earlier — for the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) projects in the state. This was not in consonance with a 2004 Supreme Court order to decentralise the supply of this supplementary nutrition, so as to involve local village communities and women’s self-help groups. 

The opposition alleged that this would permit private contractors and commercial manufacturers enter this multi-crore business, which the apex court had banned in 2014. Recently, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court struck down the tender, which reduced the number of blocks to 70, on the ground that it didn’t meet the Supreme Court’s decentralisation objective.

This isn’t the first time that Munde has come under fire regarding such supplements. Last year, she was accused of clearing in a single day tenders worth Rs206 crores for snacks and other materials for ICDS anganwadis or creches. After the 2004 Supreme Court order, the Maharashtra government laid down that no single self-help group should supply these requirements to more than five anganwadis to prevent abuses of the system. 

But the Congress government can hardly claim it is above board in this respect. Out of the Rs206 crores, the largest contract was worth Rs104 crores for chikki, or peanut brittle, without calling for e-tenders, as was required for any order over Rs3 lakhs. It was awarded to Pradnya Parab, a local Congress politician who heads an NGO called the Suryakant Mahila Audyogik Sahakari Sanstha which had an annual turnover of over Rs300 crores in Sindhudurg. The chikki was found to be inedible. As a consequence of the controversy, the Sanstha now has a turnover of just Rs2 crores a year and has had to cut down its operations and work force, comprising women.

The apex court ordered that food should be fresh, local and served hot. In 2009, a Congress-NCP coalition sub-committee made no mention of chikki or ayurvedic biscuits, which were introduced two years later. In 2008, Union Woman and Child Welfare Minister Renuka Chowdhury tried to introduce centrally produced packaged food to anganwadis but was opposed by her own government. Among other objections, it was pointed out that such fortified food was not easily digested by a severely malnourished child.

In the state assembly, Munde admitted that in some cases, substandard ingredients were found in the chikki and stocks were recalled. She also acknowledged that a single contract worth Rs80 crores was awarded to supply children chikki in anganwadis. However, she also cited, in her defence, how Suryakanta was awarded contracts worth Rs52 crores and Rs23 crores in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

The role of the Congress was exposed in 2012 during a case filed by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties in 2001 against the central government, asking for the removal of “contractors” for the supply of hot, cooked meals and take-home rations in the ICDS. The Supreme Court’s Commissioners, NC Saxena and Harsh Mander, asked the court’s adviser Biraj Patnaik to file a report on the supply of supplementary rations in Maharasthtra. He pointed out how there were huge irregularities in this supply, in violation of the court’s orders. Though not specifically proven, there was “a nexus between politicians, bureaucrats and private contractors…leading to large-scale corruption and leakages”. One senior official remained in the same post for a decade.

Even when these contracts were given to mahila mandals, these were subcontracted to private contractors, violating the letter and spirit of the apex court’s orders. This could not have happened without “the active complicity at the highest levels of governance in Maharashtra”. 

Patnaik looked at contracts awarded to three mahila mandals, though not Suryakant. They had in turn outsourced the production of take-home rations to private agro-companies. None had their own production facilities. He established that de jure and de facto, the ownership of the mandals and these companies was in the hands of the same family. In each case, the mandal had formed a sub-committee to oversee the production and financial affairs of a unit owned by family members of the same sub-committee.

He referred to how previous investigations had led to the cancellation of a similar contact in Karnataka of Christy Fried Grams Industry, a private company, following two years of persistent follow-up with that state government.

In UP, a contract had been awarded to a company called Great Value Foods, owned by the controversial Ponty Chadha, again violating the court’s orders.

In Maharashtra, apart from the subversion of the rules, the quality of the rations has been atrocious, leading to it being sold as cattle feed in some cases. The food packets lacked any nutrition and often were contaminated with fungi and termites. The Woman and Child Welfare Department had refused to take any action, arguing — following time-tested bureaucratic stonewalling — that the case was sub judice.

Patnaik rues the fact that, according to National Family Survey 3, as many as 5,000 children die every day in the country due to preventable causes, including malnutrition. “The ICDS is the only institutional mechanism of the Government to deal with issues of children under the age of six. The Government spends close to Rs8,000 crore a year on the provision of supplementary nutrition. It is unconscionable that a country with the highest rates of child malnutrition, globally, allows rampant corruption to undermine the ICDS and thereby the future of its children,” he concludes.

It has now been reported that some 83,000 children in this age group have been classified as severely underweight in Maharashtra last year, with the mortality of such children rising three times. This may partly have to do with the drought. To add insult to injury, the budget of the Women & Child Development department has been reduced by 62 per cent. Nature and human greed have combined to reduce the state’s human development indices to abysmal levels. 

The author is chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of India (FEJI)