The Image That Should Shame Us All

A group of children — barefoot, hungry, sitting on a dusty schoolyard in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district. Their lunch? Served not on plates. Not even on leaves. But on scrap paper — torn, discarded, and spread across the ground like their dignity.
This is not a scene from a forgotten past. This happened this week. In 2025. In the world’s fifth-largest economy.

When Welfare Becomes a Wound

The Mid-Day Meal Scheme, rechristened as the Pradhan Mantri Poshan shakti Nirman (PM Poshan) programme, was meant to nourish young india — ensuring that hunger doesn’t stand between a child and a classroom.

Instead, in Hullpur village of Vijaypur block, the scheme turned into a symbol of systemic rot.

Videos that surfaced from the school show children eating rice and curry off crumpled bits of paper — the kind used to wrap groceries or scrap notes. There were no utensils. No proper flooring. Not even a shelter above their heads.

A scheme for nutrition reduced to a spectacle of negligence.

The Inquiry That Came Too Late

When the footage went viral, Sheopur district Collector Arpit Verma ordered a swift inquiry by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate. The probe confirmed the shocking truth: meals had indeed been served on scrap paper.

The self-help group responsible for the meals was terminated, and a show-cause notice was issued to the school principal. A standard bureaucratic fix — neat on paper, meaningless in spirit.

Because what happens next week? Next month? Next year? Will the next group do any better when the system itself is broken?

Promises Served Cold

According to official data, madhya pradesh provided mid-day meals in 87,567 out of 88,299 schools as of november 6 — leaving 732 schools without meals that day. Each number is a child who went hungry, a plate that stayed empty.

The ruling bjp had, in its 2023 assembly manifesto, promised to enhance the quality of mid-day meals, even suggesting tetra-packed milk and “balanced nutrition.” Fine print and fancy packaging don’t fill stomachs — accountability does.

A Law That Could Change Everything

It’s time to stop pretending we don’t know the solution.

If every politician, IAS officer, IPS officer, and senior bureaucrat were legally required to send their children to government schools, this problem would vanish in a year.

Imagine the urgency in improving classrooms if ministers’ own kids sat under leaky roofs.
Imagine the hygiene in government hospitals if MLAs’ families had to get treated there.
Imagine the transformation if those who write the policies had to live them.

Make it law that every elected representative and every Group A-B government employee must send their children to government primary schools.

Make it law that all politicians and top officials must use government hospitals.

india won’t just change.
It will evolve.

The Scrap Paper Mirror

This incident in Sheopur isn’t an isolated lapse — it’s a mirror. A mirror that reflects the indifference of privilege, the failure of governance, and the distance between power and people.

As long as the ruling elite outsource their empathy and insulate their families from the realities of public systems, reform will always be cosmetic.

Scrap paper was never meant to be a plate. But in today’s india, it has become one for the children who can’t vote, can’t protest, and can’t complain.

Final Word: When the System Eats the Child

Midday meals were meant to be a symbol of equality — where every child, rich or poor, eats the same food at the same table.

But today, we have two Indias:
One where children eat on marble dining tables.
And another where they eat on scrap paper.

Until the first india is forced to live like the second, nothing will change.