Upper caste moms-to-be refuse food served by Dalits in UP anganwadis

The Uttar Pradesh government's ambitious plan to provide nutritious food to pregnant women and malnourished children, called Hausla Poshan Yojana, has run into deep-rooted caste trouble. According to officials, pregnant women in many places have flatly declined to eat food, however nutritious it may be, that is prepared by an Anganwadi worker from the scheduled castes.Under the scheme, which began on June 20 and will be launched across the state in four phases, pregnant women and malnourished children would be provided cooked, nutritious food and one fruit each.Pilibhit district programme officer Raj Kapoor told TOI that as many as 18 pregnant women at Dhankuna village alone, under Amaria block, refused to consume the food on Thursday, saying that it had been cooked by an "untouchable" woman who is the Anganwadi in-charge. "In a similar way, a group of six students in a government primary school situated on the Barkhera-Daulatpur road in Pilibhit has not been eating the midday meal since the beginning of the new academic session as the cook hired by the school belongs to the scheduled caste," Kapoor added.While reports of women from the upper castes being reluctant to accept food cooked by Dalit Anganwadi workers have surfaced from many other centres across the state, this is the first instance of outright boycott, officials said.According to a senior official associated with the nutrition programme in Agra, cases of resistance to food prepared by schedule caste and schedule tribe women have surfaced in the district too.(With inputs from Deepak Lavania in Agra and Ishita Bhatia in Meerut)