Ceasefire in Iran, woodfires in Uttar Pradesh

The school day ends for Deveshwari at 2 p.m. but her work does not. Slinging a bag over her shoulder, and covering her head with a cotton dupatta, she steps out into 40 degrees Celsius heat. Headed not for home, but for wood. “I’m a teacher in this primary school,” she says. “But I also have to ensure my students get their midday meal. So, I’ll go firewood hunting now.”

Deveshwari Negi, 48, is teacher-in-charge at the Primary School Roodan Khera in Mall block on Lucknow’s rural outskirts. All five staff members are women. Two assistant teachers and three rasoiyas – the cooks who prepare midday meals for the children.

Under the Centre's midday meal scheme, more than 15 million students in over 1,41,000 government primary and upper primary schools across Uttar Pradesh are entitled to freshly cooked, nutritious meals. Almost all these schools are provided with LPG connections. But the LPG crunch brought on by the US-Israel war on Iran is disrupting this most vital scheme for children. Very large numbers of schools have been hit, but there’s official silence on how many.

For about a month now, every day after school, Deveshwari and the four others fan out across the village gathering firewood instead of heading home. “We’ve tried our luck with the gas agency and local wood sellers. We’ve even appealed to our village pradhan – but nobody is able to help in these tough times,” Negi tells PARI.

Once easily available, firewood is now grabbed by commercial buyers in Lucknow city area. “We’ve sold all our stock to the restaurants and hotels. It’s not that we don’t want to help the teachers and students, but we don’t have enough for all,” says local firewood supplier Dharmesh Yadav. “The little that remains meets our own daily needs. Else, what would we eat?”

The students, too, chip in with firewood collection. Even plucking small and large twigs from tree branches that brush the school’s roof.

Hanuman, husband of Rajeshwari, the pradhan of Roodan Khera village, tells PARI, “I used to oversee the midday meals until August last year. After that, I handed it over to madam (Deveshwari). Firewood should be available because we cook on wood fire at home as well. I’ll visit the school and see what the problem is. I haven’t been able to go these past 15 days.” This Dalit couple prefers to use their first names only.

The food is now cooked in the open, on a mitti ka chulha (mud stove), stuffed with firewood, ply, and anything else that burns. The rasoiya has made tehri today – a rice dish with potatoes and soybean (and peas in the winter). Bright yellow tehri stands out in the shiny steel plates. The children of Roodan Khera seem to savour the meal, and some prefer eating it in their own plastic tiffin boxes.

“It takes 15 minutes for the firewood to flame up properly and only then can we begin cooking. We make only one dish these days due to fuel scarcity,” says Chhoti, 57, the school rasoiya. She’s a Dalit who uses only by her first name and earns Rs. 2,000 a month for this work. “Even we rely on the meals we make for these children – and eat after feeding them,” she confirms.

Priyanka Gautam,10, a class 4 student, says it is only in school she gets to eat tehri, which is her favourite. “It’s never made in my home. Once mummy tried making it, but it didn’t turn out like the one we eat here,” she tells PARI. She has two elder brothers aged 15 and 19, both school dropouts.

We walk to Priyanka’s house after school. She runs inside whispering to her mother, “they made tehri today. I have got you some in my tiffin (box).”

“We have to fetch firewood for cooking dinner,” her mother Roopkala Gautam, 47, says. “I might cook roti and we have some dal left from the day. I’m grateful Priyanka gets to eat her lunch in school because here there are days we don’t eat lunch,” she says quietly. “We have breakfast late, around 10 a.m. and then just rounds of tea to get through the day. But we eat dinner.”

Roopkala and her husband work as farm labourers earning Rs. 175 a day.

“If this situation continues,” Deveshwari Negi says, “midday meals in our school could stop any day.” And with it, the one meal these 103 children rely on, will stop too.