It wasn't a protest of slogan raising, stone pelting or fasting-unto-death. Far from it. It was one in which the youngest was not older than a year, and the oldest, no more than 15.
It required of them to eat and eat, for many, a 'delicacy' their palates couldn't afford all these years. For most children of the Ganesh Kheda and Shirpura villages in Shivpuri district, Madhya Pradesh, it was the first time they would ever be eating an egg.
While MP is among the states with the worst rate of malnourishment, every third child in Shivpuri is undernourished, and plagued by diseases that could in turn claim their lives. It is in such a state — with an especially large tribal populace — that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had recently, and infamously, banned eggs among children in government schools and anganwadis. He had vetoed a proposal to introduce eggs in in three tribal districts of Mandla, Hoshangabad and Alirajpur.
"This is like dawa (medicine) for our children. We don't understand why they don't want them to eat eggs?" asks a mother in the Shirpura village.
While the ban was the result of the state succumbing to a hugely influential Jain lobby, the 'anda abhiyan' was a symbolic protest aimed at highlighting the benefits of egg — a far more nutritious source of protein compared to milk or banana.