In Delhi’s Atal Canteens, food to fill a stomach

It is around 11 a.m. and the downpour is intensifying. Mahesh Saini, 40, with a sack slung over his left shoulder and a stick in his right hand, reaches the Nehru Nagar Atal Canteen, an initiative of the Delhi government to provide meals at ₹5 each. As he enters, a man from a counter inside shouts, waving his hand: “Bora bahar (Leave the sack outside).”  

Mahesh, a ragpicker, puts down the white plastic sack, ties its mouth carefully, and leaves it next to the door. He props up his stick there too. His once-white T-shirt and his hair tell the same story: neither has been washed for a while. 

He walks to the counter and the man behind a laptop holds out a web camera and takes his photo. “Now blink,” the operator says, so that the camera can scan his iris. Mahesh silently obeys, as he knows the drill by now. He produces a ₹5 coin, moves to the next counter and picks up a steel plate. 

A woman serving the meals wastes no time in filling the plate’s compartments with scoops of hot short-grain rice, yellow dal with some rajma, a runny sabzi (vegetable) of aloo (potato) with a little brinjal, and four thin tawa rotis. 

Mahesh settles at one of the six metal tables with attached metal stools. “Khana mujhe achha lagta hai (I like the food). There are no complaints,” he says, revealing his pan-stained teeth. There are about 15 people eating at the canteen. Outside, the rain pours down.

Mahesh came to Delhi about a month ago from his village in Madhubani district of Bihar after his wife died. He collects plastic bottles and other trash. For this, he earns ₹200 a day. “I end up spending almost all the money,” Mahesh says, adding that he sleeps on the footpath. 

He fishes out a flimsy black polythene bag from his pocket and packs three rotis in it for later and continues to eat the rice and dal with his hand.  

For thousands of people like Mahesh, Atal Canteens have become a daily stop for a cooked meal, which costs them little. Since December 2025, the Delhi government has started similar Atal Canteens at 100 locations across the city, giving out close to 50,000 meals every day. Each canteen has a daily capacity to provide 1,000 meals, 500 each for lunch and dinner. 

The contract for running the 100 canteens is given to 11 different companies or NGOs via a tender process. The company charges ₹30 for each meal, of which it collects ₹5 from the individual and ₹25 from the government. The 100 canteens are divided into 20 groups of five each. Food is cooked at a central canteen for each group of five canteens, and the vendor is not supposed to supply food to anyone else from there, officials say. The cooked food is then distributed to the canteens in steel drums or insulated casseroles of 20-30 litres. 

At the launch of the scheme on December 25 last year, the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that the government’s aim was to make sure that no one in Delhi goes hungry. India ranks 102nd out of 123 countries in the Global Hunger Index report, with a score of 25.8 that places the country in the “serious” hunger category.

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta says the subsidised food network has crossed the milestone of 1 crore meals served. “For the Delhi Government, Atal Canteens are an expression of our commitment to Antyodaya. The progress of Delhi must reach the person standing at the very last mile,” Gupta says. She adds that the government is open to improving the menu, but every change will be driven by nutrition, evidence, affordability, and the preferences of the people.

Respite for thousands 

Though most canteens have come up near slum clusters, a few are located near hospitals, colleges, and bus terminals, drawing people from diverse backgrounds: ragpickers, autorickshaw drivers, delivery agents, students.

The dal and the sabzi change after every meal at each canteen. On rotation are kaali (black) dal, masoor, chana dal; aloo and chana, or aloo and tomato. Unlike Oliver Twist, who was admonished for asking for a second serving, at many Atal canteens, people can refill their plates. 

Mukesh Kumar Aggarwal, advisor, Micro Education and Social Welfare Society, a non-profit organisation that runs 10 Atal Canteens, says, “For a canteen like the one in Anand Vihar, where almost 500 meals are served for lunch, we make around 125 kg of dal plus sabzi, 100 kg of rice, and 2,000 rotis,” Aggarwal says.

“After paying the workers, we make maybe 50 paisa per plate or sometimes just break even, but we are a non-profit and our aim is to feed the hungry and provide employment to people and not make money,” he adds.

Every canteen is almost identical, with six tables and eight stools each, white tiled floors, and a metal roof. Staff at the canteens complain they are not even paid the minimum wage. A woman in her 40s serving food at one of the canteens, says she gets only ₹8,500 per month. “We come here at 10 in the morning and leave only after 9 at night and get only two days off a month. The money we get is very low and there is no time to work anywhere else either,” the woman, who does not want to be identified, fearing action from the contractor, says.

Outside every canteen are photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi CM Gupta, and Vajpayee. The canteen is named after him, but his picture is the smallest of the three. There are similar posters inside the canteens too. Mahesh points to one such poster inside the canteen, speaking about the leaders, punctuating his sentences with “Jai Shree Ram, Jai Hanuman,” ending with “Modi Zindabad.” 

This does not go down well with Appu Rao, 48, at the table behind him. “Modi is giving (subsidised) food now, but in the South it has been given for a long time,” Rao, from Andhra Pradesh, says. “Delhi is the national capital. It should have happened here first. Gas cylinders cost ₹4,000 now. He (Modi) is actually taking from us. Everything is expensive.” Mahesh smiles, finishes his food, and leaves. 

Rao, who works as a daily wage labourer, says that he doesn’t come to the canteen regularly, as he doesn’t like the food. “Aloo sub mein daal deta hain (They put potato in everything). But when I cannot find any work, I come here,” he says, adding that the dal is fine. 

Rao gets into a conversation with another person about how the food was better when the canteen opened and it is still better at the Atal Canteen in Andrews Ganj in south Delhi. “The food at the Gurudwara is better than this. Sometimes, on Sundays you get paneer also there,” he says, a view that is shared by some others too.

Santosh Kumar, 28, at a table behind Rao, taps his shoulder and asks for something. Rao begins to rummage through his plastic bag, taking things out, only to produce one green chilli. “This is the last one. I bought a few for ₹5 the other day. I know a lot of people who come here,” Rao says, smiling, revealing three missing teeth on the lower jaw.  

Like some of the others, Kumar, who also works as a ragpicker, complains that the food lacks salt and spice. At another table, a person unwraps a rain-soaked piece of paper, smaller than a ₹10 note, revealing a spoonful of salt inside. He sprinkles this on his food. 

Suddenly, Chandini Yadav, 35, at another table, gets up and starts shouting at a man and ends up slapping him. The staff intervenes to escort him out of the canteen. 

“He was saying nonsense about me,” Yadav says, as she sits back down at the table. She says she is not a regular. “Cooking gas costs ₹300 a kg now, so we are cooking using wood. But the rain has made the wood wet. That is why I came here today,” says Yadav, who collects plastic bottles with her husband. He’s here too. 

As the afternoon wears on, food delivery agents and auto drivers join the community lunch. “The food is not bad. I know the location of about 15-20 of these canteens and according to the rides I get, I eat at one of these canteens twice a day. I’m saving about ₹3,000 per month,” says Harish Babu, 28, an autorickshaw driver. Many others also pitch in to say how this saves them money, because any food costs between ₹60 and ₹70. 

Besides Delhi, other States too have subsidised food at public canteens. Reetika Khera, professor at IIT Delhi, says there are about a dozen major States in India, that do, including Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. She says that the Zunka Bhakar Kendras started in Maharashtra in the mid-1990s are likely the first such public canteen initiative. 

Khera, in her recent book Freebies or Rights talks about the importance of public canteens in ensuring food security, based on a study done by her team, of 174 such canteens across three States in 2023. She says that in terms of scale, Rajasthan was the best example at the time of the study. In terms of quality, the best she has seen is Kerala. But the meals start at ₹30 in the State’s public canteens. There is also the option of ordering a non-vegetarian dish by paying extra. 

Students’ canteen

Though only 17 kilometres away, the situation at the Atal Canteen near the University of Delhi’s north campus stands in stark contrast to the one at Nehru Nagar. It’s around 6 p.m., and there are students at almost all six tables, many with their shoulder bags. It is cleaner and everyone is given spoons. The Atal Canteen was inaugurated by the Chief Minister on August 16, abutting Chhatra Marg (Students’ Road), leading to many well-known colleges, including St. Stephen’s College, Faculty of Law, and Delhi School of Economics (DSE).

A group of three students, who have completed their Masters in Political Science, are busy eating and chatting. “For ₹5, this is good. What will you get for ₹5 these days?” says Sunil, 25. “I have seen people eating food from dumpsters on the streets.”

Sitting at the other end of the table, Rahul Thakur, 25, lifts his head up and joins the conversation. “I have been eating here twice a day for the last one week. Mirch-masala kam hai (masala is less), but I can save about ₹4,000 a month by eating here,” says Thakur, who is doing his PhD in history. 

He lives nearby and pays ₹3,000 per month for a box-like room, which is only about 6 feet wide and 12 feet long. “People want to get into JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) as rent plus food costs only about ₹3,000 per month at the college hostel. But Delhi University doesn’t have that many hostels and for many people like me, who are living off campus, this canteen is very helpful,” he says. 

Past experiments

In 2010, the then Congress government in Delhi launched the Jan Aahar scheme, under which vans started providing lunch and dinner at ₹15 each. After the AAP government came to power in Delhi in 2015, they promised to start ‘aam aadmi canteens’ to provide meals at ₹5 to ₹10. The Jan Aahar scheme died a slow death. The AAP government started a pilot project at the Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital in 2017 to provide meals at ₹10, but the scheme was not scaled up. 

In the run-up to the Delhi Assembly elections in 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had been out of power for 27 years in Delhi, promised to establish Atal Canteens. 

When Rekha Gupta inaugurated the Atal Canteen in Nehru Nagar on December 25 last year, the dal was thick and the sabzi had potato, cauliflower, and carrot. The meal actually resembled the photos displayed inside and outside every Atal Canteen. Over time, the dal has become a little more watery and the sabzi has become mostly potato at many of the canteens. 

Professor Khera says, “Across India, including Delhi, the governments should work to improve the nutritional value of the meals served at canteens. Also, there should be an option, like in Kerala, where a person can pay a little extra at the canteen to buy nutritional top-ups. These could be eggs, curd, buttermilk, fish, or meat.”

She also says that when a new party comes to power in a State, they try to undermine the public canteens started by the previous government and people end up suffering due to it. “There should be some legal protection for public canteens, so that they can continue to function despite the change in governments,” she says.

Where commuters eat

The Atal Canteens are a hit at many locations, one of them being Anand Vihar on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, a stone’s throw away from the interstate bus terminal and railway station. There is a constant buzz of people coming in and leaving, many carrying large travel bags. 

Twenty-three-year-old Tejender Saini’s three-year-old son is sitting at the metal table, crying. His seven-month-old son is crawling below the table, exploring the area, as Saini and his wife eat quickly. “We work at a tile factory in Punjab and are here to meet our relatives for Raksha Bandhan,” Saini says. “At the bus stand someone told us that we would get ‘bhar pet khana’ (food to fill one’s stomach) for just ₹5 and we thought we would check it out,” he says adding that he liked the food.

“Bhar pet khana for just ₹5,” is a refrain that is heard across the canteens. For Khushboo Kumari, 17, who is travelling with her parents and three siblings, the canteen is a rest stop as they change buses to reach their village in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. She says the food is better than the midday meals served at her school, though the roti was “kachha (undercooked)”. 

But for some, the canteen itself is the destination. Rita Devi, 34, a widow, travelled with her eight-year-old daughter for about half an hour to reach the canteen. “I lost my job as a security guard at a mall about two months back as I fell ill. I have been looking for a job for the past two weeks, but I can’t find anything,” Devi says, as she lifts her maroon dupatta to wipe her tears. “I’m thinking of coming here every day till I find a job.”

nikhil.m@thehindu.co.in