NEW DELHI : Unaware of the covid-19 pandemic, four-year-old Jamuni, a malnourished girl in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, is worried that her primary school has been closed for the last 20 days.
Her worry revolves around missing the mid-day meals served in her school. Her parents, daily wage workers hard hit by the crisis, have no answer for her hunger or her questions.
One of the fallouts of the covid-19 containment measures, including the closure of primary schools and anganwadi centres, is that children in rural India now have to do without that one guaranteed school meal, potentially worsening an already “severe" malnutrition problem in India.