Plates for slates: The impact of a school feeding programme on community representations of schools

Abstract

Using the nationwide school-feeding programme-the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS)in India as its anchor, this paper critically evaluates the use of schools as sites for discharging social policies. Data from semi structured interviews (N=26) and focus groups (N=8) conducted in a north Indian village provide evidence that the community distrusts the central and the regional governments and regards state run schools as deficient institutions. The paper argues that the MDMS, interpreted in such a social climate, had a noteworthy impact of the community representations of local schools. On the one hand it was represented as an evil governmental design to distract poor people from education and was completely rejected by many community members. Such representations, the paper argues, further erodes the faith of the community in state run schools. Data from the study also indicate a second representational outcome where the MDMS has contributed to a shift in community representations of schools from being a site for imparting education to that of an institution providing free meals. The paper concludes by identifying two critical considerations that need to inform the use of schools as the site of social policy: (a) the symbolic environments of meaning making which inform local interpretations of policy; and (b) the representational activity surrounding the local reception and interpretation of policies. The theory of Social Representations informs the arguments made in the paper.

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