"Source/Katmandou Post"
Stand and deliver, by CHANDRA MANI BIMOLI
Having been in the teaching profession for over a decade, it agonising to write on this topic. Nevertheless, facts are facts, and I believe that one should confront them directly as living in a state of denial or sweeping things under the carpet only makes things worse. After all, what is wrong in calling a spade a spade? It wouldn’t be an exaggeration when I say that a teacher is supposed to be a guide, friend and philosopher to human civilisation. There was a time in the past when teachers were held in high esteem for their knowledge, wisdom and intellect. Consider the veneration teachers like Plato and Socrates commanded and still command.
Having said this, however, it is distressing that such lofty ideals have become a thing of the past in the society we live in. Teaching is not any more a noble profession it used to be in the days of yore. It is all too obvious that in the context of Nepal when a person fails to make it in other avenues of employment (the civil service, banks and financial institutions and so forth) he reluctantly ends up as a teacher as a last resort propelled chiefly by economic compulsions. Unfortunately, one becomes a teacher by compulsion not choice.
It is rightly said that educational institutions—schools, colleges and universities—throw light on the state of a society and the country as a whole. I’m sure hardly anybody would disagree with me when I say that the entire educational sector in our country is in a complete mess. Just think about the state of government-run schools, colleges and university. It feels nauseating. The billions of rupees of taxpayer money poured into them by the government notwithstanding, the quality of education has been deteriorating over the years, and educationists are nothing more that silent spectators having neither the vision, devotion, determination, courage or conviction to confront reality and bring about much needed positive changes.
We needn’t go very far. Just look at the SLC and HSBC results from public schools. Thousands of students from public schools fail in the SLC, this in spite of the fact that in recent years, it has been the policy of the SLC Board to detain as few students as possible. When I was at the centre to correct SLC papers this year, some government school teachers frankly admitted that almost nothing much is taught in public schools and advised me to be lenient when marking the exam papers from public schools.
One of my teacher colleagues told me that public school teachers were more liberal than their counterparts in the private sector when allotting marks. But when I asked him if they were equally liberal in their teaching activities, he was absolutely mum. The only instruction one of my friends Santosh Dahal was given while correcting HSEB papers was to be liberal in giving marks to ensure that only a few failed the exam.
The bulk of the teachers in public schools, in spite of the pay, perks and retirement benefits they are provided, have failed to deliver. I presume that the job security they enjoy being in government service allows them the liberty to continue with their free and easy ways. Hardly any government school teacher ever enrols his child in a public school. This is itself a testimony, a frank admission to the miserable quality of teaching in public schools.
Teachers are always vocal about their rights, and do not hesitate to shut down schools and take to the street to press their demands, whether right or wrong. But about their responsibilities and the failure to deliver, most teachers are silent. Just recollect the way teachers threatened to disrupt the SLC and HSBC examinations and the stern warning of dire consequences from the education minister. Putting aside the notion of fairness and justice, teachers appointed on the basis of their political affiliation, nepotism and favouritism hold the entire educational system to ransom by demanding outright permanent status without competition.
We teachers are never tired of complaining that many students are disruptive in class, that studies do not figure in the list of their priorities, that they are more obsessed with fashion, mobile phones and Facebook, and that many students are becoming increasingly inclined towards using unfair means during exams. We seldom care to examine our shortcomings. All that most of us do in the classroom in the name of teaching is teach the students to cram, rehearse and vomit in the exam. The extent of decay and decadence is all too obvious.
In the not too distant past, examinations were conducted in the right spirit. Cheating, malpractices or using any unfair means in the examination were very rare. But now, thanks mainly to teachers, they have become a routine affair and an indispensable part of our examination system. All these are very much tolerated. At many exam centres, the SLC and HSBC exams have become a farce. If teachers remain silent spectators in the face of such malpractices, my only advice is to spare teachers from all invigilation duties!
It is distressing that the collective commitment of teachers to their profession does not live up to expectations. On many counts, teachers have failed to deliver contrary to what is expected of them. This puts in jeopardy the wellbeing of our entire country for the failure of teachers is not merely the failure of individuals.
It is the failure of society at large for teaching is the foundation which creates all other professions. When the pillars crack and crumble, the entire structure falls apart like a house of cards. Bad teachers cost more than anything else to society.
A CHEMICAL NATION
Will the government budget for agriculture be doubled as Baburam Bhattarai once promised? We do not know. Let’s hope it does. At the same time we have to understand that doubling the money alone will not be enough. The budget has to be aimed at promoting highly productive and ecologically sustainable agriculture. The talk about agriculture budget is happening at a time when reports of chemical fertiliser shortage have become daily headline news. While we can understand farmers’ plights, we have to be mindful of the fact that providing for subsidised chemical fertiliser is not the true solution for Nepal’s agriculture. Good thing is there are now millions of farmers across the world who have moved away from the toxic treadmills. It is time to learn from them and chart saner paths ahead.
Amir Khan asked Hukumchand Singh, an organic farmer from Rajsthan to come on stage during the blockbuster Satyameva Jayete episode on Sunday 24 June and he gave him a warm hug. That was perhaps the most poignant moment of that episode entirely devoted to both good and bad stuffs happening in Indian agriculture. First the bad stuff. Most of food that Indians and Nepalis are buying in the market contains high doses of dangerous pesticides. Kavitha Kurugunti of Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) told viewers during the same TV show that most of the food samples officially tested in India contained high doses of pesticides.
Those who farm with chemical fertilisers and pesticides are becoming dangerously ill. A trainload of people go to Charitable Cancer Hospital in Bikaner, Rajsthan every day from villages in Punjab, India’s heartland of modern agricultural. That train is called ‘cancer train’ because all of those who board it go for cancer treatment. Those who are selling poison are overly manipulative about the benefits that their products bring to farmers. Buying fresh vegetables often means that you are buying freshly poisoned vegetables. And in Kerala, the state-government owned cashew plantation spread hundreds of thousands of litres of Endosulfan for twenty five years from late seventies onward. The result: thousands of children were born with debilitating birth-defects and thousands of pregnancies ended in miscarriages.
If modern Indian agriculture has become evidently bad for human health and ecosystem, we also find in India millions of farmers who are also moving away from chemicals and are adopting a variety of highly productive organic farming practices. Amir Khan asked Hukumchand Singhji if his yield had gone down. In the first year, a little bit. After that, yields have gone up every year to the extent that his neighbours come to learn from him.
The most spectacular change has happened in the South-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh. Amir asked over 3G connection twenty farmers in a village in Andhra Pradesh how many of them used to use pesticide in the past. All of them raised their hand. He then asked how many do now. None, came the answer in unison.
These twenty farmers were among the over a million others across Andhra’s thousands of villages where non-pesticide management (NPM) has spread spectacularly. The statistics are stunning. In 2009, I wrote in this column about ongoing transformation in Andhra Pradesh’s smallholder agriculture. According to an extensive report published by the World Bank, CMSA’s non-pesticide management of agriculture had expanded from 450 acres in a small village in 2004 to over half a million households covering about half a million hectares of land. Between 2009 and now, there seems to have been even more spectacular growth. During his conversation with Amir in the show, Ramanjaneyulu, agriculture scientist and coordinator of Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, said that said that close to 1.5 million hectares of farmland (3.5 million acres) was under non-pesticide management in 2011. And the number continues to grow. If this spreads at this rate, soon over half of Andhra Pradesh’s agriculture will be free of harmful chemicals and poisons.
For long this state also had been India’s farmer suicide capital, with the bulk of 250,000 cases during the last fourteen years occurring here. The World Bank’s report in 2009 showed that not a single case of suicide had happened in villages where farmers had adopted NPM. Farmers were producing more. They were incurring less expenditure for farming. They are eating healthier food and breathing non-poisoned air. Increasingly, farmers who sell their surplus are getting premium price for their products.
Sikkim’s is even more ambitious goal. Pawan Chamling told Amir Khan that his government has plans to convert the whole state into certified organic farming state by 2015. They have already banned the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides in the state.
In Nepal, there are a lot of district level agricultural officers who are actively involved in promoting highly productive organic farming. The projected increase in agricultural budget has to go in supporting and expanding their activities among farmers. Thousands of farmers across Nepal have already been practicing biodiverse sustainable agriculture. With some support from governments, they can lead the transition to saner and better agriculture across Nepal. One of the leading organic farmers in Nepal, Govinda Sharma of Patalekhet, Kavre is also advising Sikkim government in the process of transition there. It is time to make bold moves away from the toxic chemical treadmill. Nothing short of this will work in really addressing the interrelated problem of farm productivity, human health and ecological sustainability.
anilbhattarai@gmail.com
MAY 11 - ZIGZAGGING INTO TREATMENT
A couple of days after the Babarmahal blast, I made my way to Bir Hospital to report on the casualties of the incident. Among my many interviews with the victims and their loved ones that day, a long conversation with an old man—whose son had been injured in the explosion—was one that particularly stood out in my mind. Immediately following introductions, the man began describing the disappointing treatment his son had been administered till then. Doctors would come and go, he told me, saying little about the patient’s condition. Even when he’d sought the help of nurses at the hospital, they were equally uncooperative in giving him information; some would wave him off and tell him his son was “fine”, another would say he was “critical”. Desperate, the man even asked me if I could do anything, and it was fortunate that I was able to contact the hospital director that very day and give him updates on his son’s state.
The incident begs the question: Why couldn’t the doctor spare a few minutes to brief family and friends at such a distressing time? This sort of indifference is one of the major problems in the country’s health fraternity at present. Although medical treatment in Nepal has certainly progressed over time, communication between doctors and patients is still of a dismal standard, where many doctors place themselves on a pedestal of sorts, expecting patients to all but bow under their superiority. And, one might wonder, if this is the case today, what must things have been like three decades ago?
The answer can be found in Ramesh Koirala’s book Ama ko Mutu, where he depicts the medical scenario in Nepal as it existed back then. Weaving a narrative through his mother’s attempts to seek a cure for the “unknown” disease she
suffered from, Koirala has—in a very engrossing manner—shed light on the cruelty of the hospital system, as witnessed by his family over two decades. Encompassing the many misleading diagnoses and failed treatments his mother was subjected to, including constant blood-tests,
X-rays and relentless doses of
medication, the anecdotes collected in this volume are a tragic reminder of the kind of apathy that doctors often show towards patients here.
The troubles begin when Koirala’s mother, and the protagonist of the novel, suddenly develops chest pains, and her breathing becomes heavy. Dr Kaji is approached first, who decides that the symptoms stem from her rigorous work schedule, and promptly prescribes some medication. When problems persist a few days later, a compounder called ‘Pal Doctor’ tells her it has to do with troubles in her chest and uterus. He offers her an injection to be administered twice a day for five days. It doesn’t help.
Koirala’s mother then leaves for Siliguri to see ‘Kalu Doctor’. And from there on to ‘Doctor of the King’ Dr Sharma, to Dr Rishikesh, to Dr Ansari, to Dr Dixit from Patan and on and on. As the doctors change, so do the diagnoses. They range from issues with the size of her lungs, to tuberculosis, to many other conditions, and although the conclusions are different each time, the medication she is prescribed shows no sign of abating. And while physically weakened—not to mention financially—by the treatments, nothing comes close to actually curing her.
This long running game of failed diagnoses plays out until the introduction of echocardiography in the country. It is then that Koirala’s mother finds out that she has Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), a condition referred to as a ‘hole in the heart’, a type of congenital heart defect. And finally, with the certainty of that discovery, she is able to seek relief, thanks largely to generous assistance from a Russian college, where one of her sons is studying, that offers to treat her for free.
Written in simple, accessible language, Ama ko Mutu is deeply touching; as a reader, you will find yourself sympathising with the ailing mother, and heavily frustrated with the difficulties she encounters. And as a young witness to his mother’s painful struggle through the medical system, the writer’s voice is particularly powerful in its innocence,
making his eventual disillusionment with doctors and treatments that much more poignant.
Doctors mentioned in the book haven’t been named specifically—only their last names are used—an indication of the writer’s reluctance to drag anyone into controversy. Besides which, experiences are mostly related matter-of-factly, instead of through over-emotional ranting, leaving judgement entirely up to the readers. Koirala, now a
doctor associated with the Gangalal Heart Centre, merely concludes that had any of the medical professionals they saw over time been competent enough to offer up the right diagnosis—a simple one, as it turns out—and prescribe the right medication, it would’ve saved his mother and the family a whole lot of grief.
Of course, that was a long time ago, and one would assume things are different now. Sadly, that isn’t the case. Although the Interim Constitution following the 2006 uprising has guaranteed health as a fundamental right of Nepali citizenry, in reality there exist many more avenues today where the vulnerability of naïve patients can be exploited by health institutions set up mainly for commercial purposes. There are many such institutions around the country that have been breaching regulations, and continue to mushroom thanks to the ineffectuality of regulatory bodies that are under great political pressure or susceptible to under-the-table dealings. This is one of the many reasons the masses have become so aggressive towards health professionals in recent times; the cases of doctors being assaulted and hospitals vandalised have been rising visibly.
Koirala’s book can thus, in many ways, be seen to apply as much to the health system today as it does to things back in the day. Characters like Dr Gongol, who yells at his patients, or Pal Doctor and Kalu Doctor who swindle innocents in the Tarai, are not entirely uncommon sights in present-day hospitals, and one wouldn’t be surprised to see someone like Koirala’s mother in the lobby of Bir Hospital or other more sophisticated private clinics, waiting for her turn, desperately clinging to the hope of a cure.
Call it a memoir or a novel (publishers have been intentionally vague about specifying a genre), Ama ko Mutu is a refreshingly thought-provoking work that represents the woes of all those who have been made guinea pigs by doctors in the name of treatment. Readers will undoubtedly find something to identify with in the book—whether it is something they’ve experienced personally or witnessed second-hand. And while it is foolish to believe the system can change overnight, it helps to know that there are conscientious doctors like Koirala out there who are seeking to voice the patient’s perspective and push their concerns to the fore.
JAN 07 - Death in darkness
My neighbour's daughter, who had given birth to a baby a week ago, was eating only rice gruel as her diet. Somebody had advised her to avoid oily and spicy food. The reason: the doctor had warned of a possibility that her baby might catch Viral Hepatitis (Jaundice) later. The baby's blood type matched with the father's. Nobody in the family showed concern towards this.
When I found this out, I told them she (and they) were doing the wrong thing. The baby was already frail and anemic. Also, she had to suckle her baby. So, I advised her parents to provide her nutritious foods and lots of soup. "She doesn't eat," her mother complained, "Even Jwain (the son-in-law) has forbidden us to provide her such foods". A soldier in the Nepal Army, their son-in-law was also, I guessed, not a wise husband. Moreover, he was as superstitious and ignorant as the others in the family.
After two days, when I returned home from college I found everybody in rush and horrified in my neighbour's house. I heard children scream, and rushed towards them. When I reached there, the baby girl was throwing out her hands and feet unconsciously. She had bitten her tongue and her eyes were looking towards infinity.
It is a common belief that nobody should touch a nursing mother and her baby until the name giving ceremony is performed because they are impure. Without taking any notice of this, I rushed to help. My mother and my wife joined me. I got her family members to rub her palms and the bottom of her feet gently. Other people of the neighbourhood were mute and standing at a distance, as nobody dared coming close, to be impure. The girl came to consciousness after a while. They said it was the third time she had shown the same symptoms that morning.
I felt danger lurking. Her face was so pale and colourless that it looked anemic and other worldly. But her family members were convinced that it was a 'lagu' (an illness caused by some bad spirit). A shaman had already tried to cure her twice that morning. They were thinking of calling him again. As suggested by the shaman, they were trying to hide red things so that she would not notice them and faint.
I immediately called an ambulance and managed to rush her to a nearby clinic despite her family's bewilderment. She was referred to a bigger hospital.
Both the mother and the baby are now at home, back after a weeklong treatment in the hospital. Now, their health is normal. The mother is eating nutritious food and soups. So, she doesn't have to feed her baby with cow or buffalo milk anymore. I am happy because my little help saved somebody's life. But I wonder how many lives are lost in Nepal every year due to people's ignorance.
Parshu Shrestha
parshustha@gmail.com
JUL 07 - No right to pollute / Ajaya Dixit
With the coming of the monsoon, the filth in our rivers will be temporarily flushed out. Yet many rivers in Nepal and South Asia are in a state of continuous degradation. The technological lock-in of water-based sewage disposal systems and their unquestioned adoption and practice is one of the main reasons for the sorry state of our rivers.
Flush toilets have become a basic necessity for the majority of urban Nepalis. Each flush converts about 15 liters of clean water into sewage. These flush toilets are a technological artifact of the Victorian era that have failed to evolve despite massive improvements in science and technology over the years. Every day, we carelessly mix vast amounts of clean water with our excrements and then proceed to dump them untreated into natural water bodies via underground sewer lines. The more sleek and comfortable a household’s bathing facilities become, the more polluted our rivers get. Kathmandu’s newly built high-rise apartments, condominiums and housing colonies are quickly becoming point sources of high volumes of liquid wastes that end up untreated in our rivers and their tributaries.
Not long ago, standing on the bank of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu was a blissful experience. The water’s ripples and whirls were a continuous reminder of nature’s beautiful gift. As a child on the bank of the river, I would rejoice watching the fast flowing river break at its sandy bed in a white froth. It took me almost 20 years of formal training to understand the science that explained this hydraulic phenomenon. Dramatic innovations and developments in the sciences and in technological tools have helped us develop safe drinking water and waste disposal systems. The basic water needs of most people in the developed world have been met. Wastewater treatment methods in those parts of the world are fairly robust and are put into effective use. But not only is wastewater in the developing world still untreated, but a majority of the people living in our part of the world also do not have access to clean drinking water.
Nepal’s kulos, Kathmandu’s dhungaydhara and ponds and the anicut, garat, kuhl and karezin of South and Central Asia were built before modern hydraulic science was developed. They were built when needs were limited and the waste generated was minimal. For thousands of years, these traditional systems continued to function and serve their purpose, becoming part of our rich cultural heritage. However, increasing demands and the proliferation of waste caused by unregulated urban growth have relegated them as inefficient and insufficient to meet emerging needs. If this trend continues, the remaining traditional systems will become extinct in the near future. When our traditional systems die, so will our rivers. They will increasingly be filled with sewage, untreated industrial pollutants and solid waste. Ultimately Nepalis, our entire nation and, consequently, our civilisation will lose out.
Already depleted of their flow by water diversions upstream, the Valley’s rivers have become sorry sights and a conservationist’s nightmare. In many developing countries, utilities that manage cleanup services are unaccountable to the people and often fail to meet their responsibilities. This type of pervasive institutional dysfunction is also present in Nepal and is partially to blame for turning the Bagmati and its tributaries in Kathmandu into sewage. Because our prevailing water and waste managing institutions have no incentives for improving, vast stretches of our rivers continue to remain filthy.
If we allow such conditions to continue, it is likely that people in Kathmandu will cease to see clean flowing rivers. This is unacceptable, and we must begin to improve the state of our rivers. But where and how do we begin? Clearly, there are no silver bullet solutions to make the rivers run clean immediately. Our approach must be multi-pronged and continuous because improvements can only come incrementally.
We can start by first minimising the volume of treated water that we turn into sewage. Installing low volume flush toilets in existing and new bathrooms can dramatically reduce that volume of water. Installing rainwater harvesting tanks for flushing toilets can also help minimise it. Diverting rainwater into a tank and using this stored water in bathrooms will prevent treated water—from municipal and other supply sources—from becoming sewage. A 1000-liter capacity tank, for example, will meet the flushing needs of a family of five for four monsoon months. Tanks of higher capacity can be used if needs are higher, though this decision will also mean higher investment. The amount of clean water saved can thus be allocated to meet needs of those without an acceptable level of service or be stored in aquifers to meet needs in drier seasons.
The use of rainwater and low volume toilets for flushing will help prevent treated water from becoming sewage, but they will not make our rivers clean if household and other industrial waste continues to go untreated into rivers. We desperately need to devise alternative methods of disposing our waste—a method that will not pollute our fresh rivers. A non-water based disposal system, such as ecological sanitation that separates the yellow (urine) and solid matters (excrement), needs to be scaled up for effectiveness.
In the meantime, we must devise a societal charter on a new water ethics that includes a goal to separate the waste cycle from the hydrological cycle. At the very least, this charter must prohibit sewage and wastewater from entering our rivers without first running it through some kind of primary treatment, such as simple oxidation ponds. Implementing such a charter will not be easy. Reaching a consensus between the myriad groups who have a stake in these processes will be elusive. And even if we do arrive at consensus, using new methods to dispose our liquid waste will be difficult because water-based waste disposal technologies are already so entrenched in our daily lives. Old habits and institutional inertia will be hard to overcome. Transitioning to a non-water based waste disposal future requires technological innovation, a willingness to cover and subsidize costs and institutions with the right incentive structures for systematically treating wastewater.
Our grandparents, as custodians of our natural world, gave us clean, flowing rivers. Our generation has no right to turn these living and flowing rivers into sewage. We cannot and must not hand them over to the next generation in such a sorry state. All rivers must be kept clean, and stretches of them must flow free. Without a societal commitment to do so, our children will be forced to visualise clean flowing rivers only through computer animations. They deserve much better. We must make our rivers clean, flowing and living again.
Food for thought – Santosh Chhetri
MAY 05 -
During my recent visit to Sharbashakti Primary School in Syangja district, a fifth grader proudly said that she never brings junk food to school. Her friends are also averse to consuming processed food, carbonated cold drinks and food with high sugar content. The principal told me that many students bring homemade food like rice, porridge, wheat bread, popcorn, samosas, and vegetable chops prepared by parents, with great care. Not that the school has banned junk food within its premises, but it has convinced its students and their parents that homemade food is hygienic.
Ask students of this school what they are carrying inside bags and they say, “Books, copies and tiffin”. Processed food has almost been wiped out from the school and so has aerated drinks. In a school like Sharbashakti, recess time is much sought after as many students come from far-off areas, tiffin in hand, and therefore, hungry. Some students living nearby go home for tiffin during the one-hour recess time. Parents provide kids with choices. Many mums make sure that what they pack is at least nutritious—hygienic, healthy and delicious vegetarian and non-vegetarian food that is also within a budget.
There is increasing awareness among parents on how to make food nutritious. Every day, except public holidays, mothers of many students pack a tasty and nutritious tiffin box full of nutritious goodies. The benefits of a ‘no junk food culture’ have percolated to them. Many parents are relieved as their children have stopped asking for junk food when they go to the markets to buy essentials. Parents—even working ones—who are hard-pressed for time don’t mind waking up earlier than the rest of the family members to carefully prepare tiffin for their children. Once their children go school with their tiffin boxes, parents tend to feel good about the fact that their children are consuming a healthy diet, not junk.
Sharbashakti School has no canteen—it doesn’t need one. But many schools across the country have cafeterias. Nobody can guarantee how good and hygienic the food they serve is. We all know that some eateries have gained notoriety by selling unhygienic, cheap and time-saving recipes. Many school canteens are in the same boat. Most of them claim healthy food is what they are providing and even put up hoarding boards claiming ‘Taja Bhojanalaya’. It’s something of a misnomer to refer to those eateries with dingy kitchens as ‘taja’. Cafeterias are okay as long as they do not provide low quality food, but they hardly ever are good enough. If they were, working parents, who are too busy to prepare tiffin, would have a huge respite. If canteens could ensure minimum presence of fat and cholesterol in the food they sell, then parents could trust the food for their children to consume. But given weak monitoring and supervision on the government’s part, the canteens cannot be trusted blindly.
Schools in some developed and underdeveloped countries have already set a precedent by banning junk food in canteens, issuing guidelines to parents for tiffins, and even employing qualified nutritionists to draw up detailed nutrition charts. The need of the hour is for some schools to lead the way in banning processed and high calorie content food on their premises. We also can convince our educational institutions to create unanimous support to discourage junk food.
I have seen many children in Kathmandu who buy junk food and take it to school. The number of students who don’t bring tiffin to school is increasing day by day. Of course, schools cannot force their students not to consume junk food, but at least they can butter them up to bring home-made food and monitor their canteens. Food sold in different forms like wafers, salted and fried items contain high trans-fat levels.
To inculcate the tiffin habit, mothers, teachers and schools have a role to play. Parents should insist that their children to take tiffin. Similarly, schools should also do their part to promote the tiffin culture. Given the fact that nutritional awareness is low among school-going kids, the school managements should keep their promote healthy and nutritious food among students.
Students have to be informed about the nutritious content of tiffin and its dietary value. Since most children of a school-going age prefer fast food in their tiffin owing to taste and novelty factor, students have to be taught that the consumption of fast food fuels the occurrence of many diseases at a later stage in life, including diabetes, high blood pressure and piled up cholesterol levels.
Eating away from home is becoming more common. The increasing trend of fast food consumption among students, sans nutritional awareness, also calls for the need to start intervention programmes. By banning the sale of all forms of junk food, carbonated cold drinks and high sugar containing food from school premises, we can promote a healthy diet among students.
According to the UN, at least 225 million of the world’s children under the age of five suffer from undernutrition. The issue of hygiene and nutrition is linked to most, if not all, MDGs, which are themselves closely interlinked.
Therefore, better late than never. Why not unveil a no-junk food policy now? What about enforcing a total ban on the sale and promotion of junk food on school premises? Isn’t it high time schools started encouraging students to opt for nutritious home-made snacks instead of junk food? Other schools should take a leaf out of Sharbashakti’s book. No school should sit on the fence any longer.