TEACHERS could be forced to prepare school dinners for 10 million pupils in West Bengal following a Supreme Court ruling that all primary schools in the eastern state must provide cooked midday meals for their pupils.

The decision follows the breakdown of a dry ration midday meal system brought in to reduce school drop-outs and improve the attendance of poorer children. Similar schemes have failed across India as a result of widespread bureaucratic bungling and corruption.

The West Bengal state government is planning to appeal against the ruling on the grounds that with a shortage of teachers, textbooks and admin staff in the 55,000 primary schools, it does not have the money or capacity to meet the requirement.

The state’s school education minister Kanti Biswas said: “It is an impossible proposition. Will the teachers be asked to leave teaching and take over the jobs of cooks or are they to sit there and supervise the cooking?” Currently the state procures at least 30,000 tonnes of food grain a month for schools to dole out to pupils. However, due to poor distribution - rations reached some schools only three times in a year - the scheme has made little or no impact on the attendance. About 10 million children do not go to school in West Bengal.

Mr Biswas conceded that the dry ration scheme worked only when rations were delivered. He said: “Attendance is 100 per cent on days the ration is distributed. It dips on other days despite the stipulation that only students with 80 per cent attendance would get the ration.”

Primary school teachers are aghast at the idea of having to serve up cooked meals. They complain that the erratic dry ration scheme often left them facing the wrath of parents when food was not doled out to their children.

Though many agreed that cooked food might be the answer to luring children to schools, they felt the government had to come up with some practical solutions. Arun Bhattacharya, general secretary of the All Bengal Primary Teachers Association, said: “We have asked teachers to refuse and they naturally do not want to be involved in this process.”

Abinash Bardhan, a teacher from one of West Bengal’s poorest districts, Purlia, said the idea was preposterous given the teacher-pupil ratio - there are schools which still do not have teachers. “A teacher is often in charge of two classes. And there are schools where the ratio is 1:800. What do you expect?” Mr Biswas said that given the poor standards of hygiene in a country like India it would be next to impossible to ensure that the food is not contaminated.

“The state government would not like to play with the health of children and run the risk of food poisoning accidents,” the minister said.