In the hill state, only 16 percent of the cooks working under the school meal programme are Dalits. This is an appalling figure in a state where they make one-fourth of the population.
Caste is a stronger divider in this picturesque Himachali village of Saraha than the river which cuts across dividing it into two halves. The west bank hosts mostly Dalit houses and the upper castes have occupied the east bank.
With a population of more than 500 people, a number considered huge in the region, Saraha in the Chaupal has two Anganwadi Kendras. But more than serving its main purpose of catering to a large number of children the two Anganwadis have come to serve a second purpose. Keeping up with the spirit of casteism that runs the village, one Anganwadi attends children of Dalit families and the other has mostly children who hail from upper caste homes enrolled.
The worker and helper at one of the Anganwadis are both Dalits and the other Anganwadi has two upper caste women working. No amount of caste blindness would justify the inability to figure out which Anganwadi the upper caste families send their children to.
Then there is a primary school in the village, run by the state government where the kids from all castes finally get to sit together. One would expect that caste would not divide the tiny tots here. But then this would be our failure to understand the clench and viciousness of the Brahmanical caste system.
The cooks and helpers who prepare the Mid-Day Meal are both upper castes. This could easily be mistaken as chance at play but it is actually a subtle yet strong institutionalized mechanism that ensures that Dalit women and men are not hired as cooks and helpers.
“The panchayat pradhan and the headmaster of the school and other members of the School Management Committee don’t select Dalit cooks. Parents are not going to accept lower castes feeding their children food” confesses a reluctant Mathura Kimta, a teacher at the Government Primary School, Saraha and an upper caste woman herself. The admission wouldn’t have come easy if she wasn’t well aware that this writer hails from an upper caste family as well.
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