Group of 8 Food secretaries to create national policy for community kitchens

With the Supreme Court’s three week deadline looming, the Food Ministry on Thursday formed a group of eight State Food Secretaries to create the framework for a community kitchens scheme.

At its last hearing on November 16 on a petition regarding starvation deaths, the apex court had questioned the government’s commitment to run community kitchens, saying the first responsibility of every welfare state should be to provide food to people dying of hunger.

The petition had urged the formation of a national food grid as well as a community kitchens scheme to ensure that “no person should sleep on an empty stomach” and rued that there is no official data available on death of persons owing to starvation although India accounts for almost a quarter of the world’s hungry people. The court pulled up the Centre for its lack of progress in framing a national policy to run community kitchens in consultation with State governments, including funds required, and gave it a three week deadline to do so.