ONE thousand rupees a month, that too for ten months a year, is paid since 2009 as the wage more than 25 lakh mid day meal workers, providing noon meal for 11 crore children in 12 lakh schools in the country. A worker has to cook food for an average of hundred children a day. In more than fifty per cent of the schools, they have to get firewood, water etc for cooking. Cleaning, washing the utensils and adding all the work they do, on an average, they have to work for six hours a day.