Midday meals | The battle over eggs

With 16 states keeping eggs off the menu, the world's largest midday meal scheme draws criticism for not keeping up with child nutrition standards(Photo montage by Bandeep Singh) Few foods expose India’s fault lines as sharply as the egg on a school student’s lunch plate. That is why West Bengal’s latest midday meal controversy became more than a change of menu and blew into a political storm. Soon after the BJP formed the government in the state on May 9, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari announced that cooked midday meals in around 1,800 government and government-aided schools in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area would be prepared by the Annamrita Foundation, an NGO associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. Since the organisation follows a strictly vegetarian tradition, the decision effectively meant that eggs would soon be replaced by soya, paneer, rajma and pulses in the school meal.