it's early morning in a small villagenot far from the city of Bangalore Kumaris cleaning the rickshaw that provideshis family's livelihoodhis wife nagamma is washing the family'sfew dishesand their children are getting ready forschoolI'll be lush however can't find hisschool shirt Coomer doesn't earn enoughto buy spare shirts for the childrenafter paying for the higher of hisrickshaw he's lucky to make four or fivedollars a day so clothes get heldtogether with safety pins for as long aspossiblewhile Abhilash helps his dad fix apunctured his brother and sister haveleftover rice for breakfast theirparents go without yet needle yaga yaganow monday a very debilitating mi youngman before us cool girl butit indietratan de la manera Martin Wattenbergwas known itemtimaeus NATO now you know that aremaintained many cartoons of a nowtomorrow's of a mixie I will get you amoment ago these kids are lucky millionsof Indian children go to school on emptystomachs their families too poor to givethem breakfast or even lunch but thanksto a quiet culinary revolution theydon't have to go hungry any longerin a tiny kitchen on the school groundsthese two cooks are preparing lunch fora hundred and twenty children they'vebeen doing it six days a week for thepast four yearsthey clearly remember their own longhungry school days incentive and in ahotel if my table and reworking theMcClure generation yeah I love the latemedieval they made October right nowmeals like this are being prepared for ahundred and fifty million schoolchildrenacross India following a landmarkdecision by the Supreme Court in 2001state governments were ordered toprovide free meals for all primaryschool children aged 10 and underlast year the scheme was expanded toinclude children up to the age of 13that some states are going even furtherthe southern state of Karnataka isextending its lunch scheme all the wayup to year ten so the scale of theprogram is mind-bogglingthis is the largest such program in theworld and largest such program in thecountry it soldierVijay Baska administers the scheme inKarnataka he's responsible for feedingseven million children every day he saysthat before the lunches were providedpoor parents often sent their childrento work and about a million kids wereout of school after about six years ofthis program the latest data censuswhich he did in 2007 shows that thenumber of children are out of school hasreduced to 70,000 so from 1 million ithas come down to 70,000 so this I wouldlargely say itthe impact is due to the mid-day MealScheme the principal of this schoolsays students now find it easier toconcentrate and classrooms are gettingcrowded come bernama better than Vietnamba live double demography employed itnow bond again attendreherbert marlowe shall I tell you what -Marie Padma crazytoday the cooks are preparing sambar astaple South Indian dish that's like asoupy vegetable curry with lentils thissimple meal is also being used as aninstrument of social change the stategovernment insists at least one cook inevery kitchen must be from the so calleduntouchable castes Americana one dayabout entity' local marketnow eject eject in and it will totallydeny la McClure the now auditor Ivankaof encourages mark under murderin many states lunch has become aone-stop shop for children's healthapart from the nutritional value of thecooked lunch these kids also get vitaminA iron folic acid and deworming tabletswith their meals are be lush isresponsible for supervising the mealadminister entire sorry - you're ourOlinda Brava cadre chick Matatacome in the condo so ha ha I'm ElenaPosada a matter the matter garrison ingeneral in our countryah Holloman city with this buggy anyhair scientifically and nothing therethat's for Bernadette Oh child you knowpractically reading ittonight it now what I did is you knowsquirrel or money-driven thrower tellyou tomorrow at least one of thechildren here doesn't even get onehome-cooked meal he has to beg for hissupper ready either this or put inlittle boy school share with you you canhave he received the chemical and now inorder the guy nano Malachor City Indianamaterial recycling beautiful daga youcan imagine a tourist in Iran themalachite Mercator bahaha son- shapedAnilahe garnered rare the author I'm going torent another trahana not today do youlook forward to lunch each day Mariana Iknow that the Little J well I don't knowwhat Australian kids would make of thismeal but I thought it was deliciousand it certainly beats the sandwichesthat I took to school but moreimportantly while governments in theWest and celebrity chefs like JamieOliver agonize over what to do aboutnutrition for kidsIndia has actually gone ahead and donesomething about itand after a satisfying lunch what betterway to relax than by reading the paperinstead of running around after theirheavy meal the kids here are taught toread aloud from old newspapers whilemost Indian schools cook their ownlunches each day some are gettingoutside help on a massive scalemany schools now have their midday mealsmass-produced in high-tech kitchens likethis oneyou can see the blending of the masalaPorter it's the result of collaborationbetween state governments and areligious group familiar to many in theWestwe are ending into the production areathe Hari Krishna movement prepares820,000 lunches in kitchens like thisevery school day they call it a gravityforce kitchen we are three storey silosand a cup of this flo15 Island poof ourrice rice and lentils come from silos onthe roof and are washed on the top floorof the kitchen this is also where thevegetables are prepared spices areground and chilies and curry leaves arefriedthen they're all poured down shoots intowaiting cauldrons on the floor belowthe food is cooked with steam generatedby giant furnaces and then it's ready todrop down to the next floor from theprocessing area food is waiting in theparking area through this short and thischannel finally the containers of foodare packed onto a fleet of custom-builtvehicles which deliver the meals toschools in and around Bangalore thelogistics are so remarkable that MBAstudents from Harvard Business Schoolare using it as a case study of timemanagement I think there is a not Ithink I definitely feel that there's adivine touch in the food that comes outof these kitchens there's a divine touchthere's a special taste to itthis is Madhu Pandit das is the HariKrishna missionary and engineer whodesigned the gravity force kitchen youknow some of these processes are slowlaborious we could have actually doneaway with but still we do it forinstance coconut grating great coconutto put in sambar for 100,000 children ismojo you could easily avoid coconutdoesn't make much difference but itmakes a difference in the test becausesamba means it has to have coconut if ifa dish is called sambar yeah it has tohave a connectedthere are four and a half thousandschools eagerly waiting for their mealsand each van visits roughly a dozen ofthem considering the state of the roadsand the trafficit seems miraculous that the lunchesreach the schools on time this roadspretty roughmost of the roads have similar this is abetter rule which we are travelingthere are few routes which vehicleswhich go in the very bad roadwe cannot go even to km/h that much thatsnotty was such a horriblebecause the Hari Krishna movement topsup government funding with donationsfrom its members it can spend more onmeals than individual schools it alsoadopts regional menus in different partsof India churning out roti and meatcurries in the north for example the manwho designed the kitchen says it can bereplicated anywhere in the world and itcould even help cure the obesityepidemic in the West so let's see if weare aboard a u.s. and do something likethis for the children we'll find outwhat's their local palate and then wewill use the technology and we'll scaleit up and it's possible to design a menuwhich will address obesity junk food youknow which destroys the children'shealtheven in India schools are becomingtargets for junk food there's been apush recently by biscuit manufacturersto have their products included in thelunch menu but the man who runs theprogram here says there will be nocookies in Connecticut well I would onlysay that children would like only aheart cooked meat a meal because anyperson who has seen children eating aheart meal will know that in Milanocookie can substitute for it howimportant are these meals to theseparticular childrenas to buddha Alaric until a bit over thecalligraphed mr. Sagar family reallycan'tyouIndia's Free Lunch (2008): How India's policy of providing school pupils with a free lunch is setting an example to the world. Subscribe to journeyman for daily uploads: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=journeymanpictures For similar stories, see: Modernisation is Killing India's Ancient Trades https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKg3lt05Frs This Child Born in India Has the Right to Health Like Any Other https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNfWGY4qtVE Is This the Best School in the World? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4AyZS6lT4I Since 2001 all Indian primary schools have provided pupils with a free midday meal. Seven years on truancy rates have been slashed, and child health is soaring. Western governments are taking note. "Compared to ours, todays generation is better off," explains a cook at one school we visited. Vijay Bhaskar agrees, he is the food administrator in Karnataka, and reveals, the number of children out of school has reduced from 1 million to 70,000. The scheme has also seen off the junk food industry; as Bhaskar comments, "any person who has seen children eating a hot meal knows that no cookie can substitute." Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/journeymanpictures Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JourneymanVOD https://twitter.com/JourneymanNews Follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/journeymanpictures For downloads and more information visit: http://www.journeyman.tv/film/3952 India's Free Lunch – Ref. 3952 Journeyman Pictures is your independent source for the world's most powerful films, exploring the burning issues of today. We represent stories from the world's top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. 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