High-tech cook-up for school lunches

Appetising: A helper serving lunch organised by the non-profit Akshaya Patra Foundation to schoolgirls at Chaumuha Primary School on the outskirts of Vrindavan. - AFP

VRINDAVAN: Churning out 1.2 tonnes of curry in under an hour, staff running the spotlessly clean, high-tech kitchen are hoping to turn around the shocking reputation of India’s free school lunch scheme.

As a large machine rolls out thousands of fluffy, hot rotis (flat breads), aproned men add spices to vegetables and broths cooking in giant steel pots in the three-storey kitchen in the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan.