Even at her young age, and despite all the problems she faces, says her teacher, Sangeeta is so precocious that she can do a teacher’s job at school and a mother’s job at home with perfect ease. The young girl’s maturity and keen sense of responsibility has been sorely tested in the past few weeks. Recently, Sangeeta’s mother, Mangala, fell ill and has been suffering for over two months.

“She has fever and becomes nauseous. Sometimes she faints suddenly while doing housework,” says Sangeeta. As the elder daughter in the family, this has placed an additional burden on her.

Mangala’s ill health means that Sangeeta has to juggle between housework and homework. At times, her studies have to give way to household chores. The young girl is also affected in other ways. “I didn’t eat anything in the morning because my mother’s not well and couldn’t cook,” she says, when asked if she had time for breakfast, before heading out to school.

“That’s nothing new with the children here,” explains her teacher, M. N. Yashoda. “Many of them come from underprivileged families. I cannot tell you the kinds of situations they have to face.”After more than 20 years of teaching at Sree Bhavani Swami HPS, Viveshwaranagar in Mysore, Yashoda has been witness to many trials and tribulations faced by children like Sangeeta. “I remember a time when children used to drop out because their parents couldn’t even pay the five rupee school fees that was charged back then.”

According to her, any program that makes a child’s life easier is brilliant. And the mid-day meal program implemented by Akshaya Patra is one of them. Not just because it gives children much needed nutrition, but also because it indirectly improves the quality of education that they are able to receive. “Before Akshaya Patra came along,” she says, “we had to handle everything from buying vegetables to keeping accounts. It took away a lot of our time.”

Though Sangeeta could not eat her breakfast, she could come to school because food would be provided for her. According to many teachers like Yashoda, the mid-day meal has become an incentive that attracts children to school. Many casual labourer parents, who can only find work on a temporary, day to day basis, now go to work knowing that at least in school, their children will receive a healthy meal. With the unsteady source of income that is the nature of their work, the soaring food prices that directly and severely affect their nutrition intake and the myriad health problems that the strenuous nature of their work exposes them to; this one meal has become a powerful reason to send their children to school.