New Delhi, July 11 -- The shutting down of schools due to Covid-19 is affecting not only children, now unable to access cooked nutritional food under the Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme, but also farmers for whom it provided an assured market.
An example is the Karnataka government's Ksheera Bhagya scheme, which offers free milk over and above the MDM food entitlement. Under it, around 64 lakh children studying in 55,683 government schools from Class I to X, and another 39.5 lakh aged six months to six years in 64,000 anganwadi centres, across Karnataka are given 150 ml and 125 ml of milk, respectively daily for five days of the week.
"It is a significant market. The supplies to schools have totally stopped, while we are continuing to deliver t...