The Hindu Business Line : A prayer with a difference

It has a 27-member team working in shifts, a storage cell, an effluent treatment plant and carriage vans. No it's not another factory, but a modern mega scale kitchen of the ISKCON Food Relief Foundation that dishes out around 50,000 puris and a proportionate amount of vegetables and dal every day.

The International Krishna Consciousness organisation cooks and delivers food to 25,000 children studying in the Capital's municipal schools as its contribution to the mid-day meal programme.

The first shift starts as early as 4 a.m. with a prayer to the lord. Volunteer cooks and kitchen staff then begin a series of activities such as sifting the rice or peeling the vegetables. The kneading of the dough is taken care of by three giant machines. The electric roller rolls and cuts the dough to prepare unbaked puris that are then fried.

By 8 a.m., the food is readied and packed in steel boxes. It is then taken in vans, donated by corporate houses, to the various schools. By 10 a.m., the second shift begins and a similar procedure is repeated. The menu and the food requirement, specified in terms of number of boxes, is communicated every day through a huge screen in the kitchen. It also mentions the route each delivery van has to take to deliver food to the schools.

The kitchen has got Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point certification in food safety management from DNV, an international certification body.

The foundation currently has its cooking facility in Delhi, where it will increase its output to feed another 15,000 students. It is also looking to open another kitchen in Noida to cater to another 25,000 children in Uttar Pradesh. "The mid-day meal programme covers over 10 lakh children in Delhi. We want to contribute more on our part," says Mr Dhananjaya Krishna Das, Co-director, ISKCON Food Relief Foundation, who attributes the success of the project to his guru His Holiness Gopal Krishna Goswami Maharaj.

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