This policy might be a vote-winner, but it's an honourable vote-winner. Quite aside from the obvious humanitarian justification, investments in nutrition have a tremendous RoI. Malnutrition remains one of the key limiting factors on India's economic growth; a bit of China-style central planning might not be a bad idea.
For a US example, school free lunch programs were instituted in 1946 after the US army found that a substantial number of WWII rejected draftees were rejected because of malnutrition problems.
Depends on how it's made. Oil/butter is often added because it's cheap and provides "fullness" without being nutritionally satisfying. With food this cheap, you'll need to take a close look at what's actually going in the food.
There is also a difference in the quality of life. Most of the clientele seem to be daily wage laborers, who could certainly use all the energy they could get.
But you are correct that it can go either way. I'm glad that lentils, at least, are part of the menu. And as someone living in the US, the meals offered seem like luxury compared with the crap fast food meal that seem to be the staple of lower class Americans (please, its not a Nationalist thing. American fast food is objectively bad for health).
This isn't exactly your 80 rupees/dosa Darshini.
Of course the food quality won't be all that great. Thats also with children's mid day meal program in Government schools.
The base rule for things like this is something is better than going hungry.
Of course, but marketing it as "healthy" may not be the most accurate way to portray it.
What you're saying is a classic case of a logical fallacy, specifically, the fallacy of relative privation. Just because there is another bigger problem doesn't mean that this is a legitimate problem.
F^4: Not necessarily. For example, some would argue that an argument is not necessarily "wrong" if it is logically sound and produces a correct conclusion, even though it is fallacious because unbeknownst to the participants there is both a false premise and countervailing unknown factor. See Gettier Problems: http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/.
F^5: The notion that the Gettier problem is a problem is itself a fallacy? "On the Gettier Problem problem" http://www.unc.edu/~ujanel/Gettier.htm
If an argument is valid, then we can further consider whether it is sound: are its propositions true when interpreted in some relevant world (often the real one, but possibly any imaginary world that the debaters agree about, e.g. the Star Trek universe or whatever). Being valid, the argument will of course be true, but if it is unsound for the given world, it will only somehow be vacuously true in that world. For instance, by exhibiting a false conclusion from a false premise in a conditional.
Applying this reasoning rigidly to the examples presented in http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/ readily unravels their issues. For instance, the lucky coincidence that Smith has ten coins in his pocket readily succumbs to the fact that this situation isn't true in all imaginable universes; it is a separate proposition from "Jones has ten coins in his pocket". It gets a separate variable, and is separately considered both false and true when we go through all the possible variable values.
Most people (not all) wouldn’t consider government distortion of markets as inherently morally bad, but bad because it can cause negative outcomes, i.e. sellers away/out of business, and ultimately leave consumers with worse or more expensive goods. And certainly that’s one possible outcome, depending on the policy and the market in question. But a lot of people leap directly from “government distortion of markets” to “disastrous results”, ignoring that in other cases, the results seem to be either positive or at least not all that bad, as evidenced by a well-functioning market existing despite government intervention. An example of this - with a greater likelihood of applicability due to being in a related market sector - is the agriculture market in the US and EU, with respect to the aforementioned subsidies.
Personally, I think this is an excellent idea. I really liked the story of the lady who said that her morning had been freed because she did not have to cook breakfast anymore. And for many of those using this place, it would similarly free up their time.
Another important point: unlike the gross fast food that you see in the US, this is actually very nutritious. Lentils are a great source of protein and other essential amino acids. The canteens also provide free drinking water. I can see this more as a public health program than a "wasteful subsidy": save millions of man-hours wasted by poor health by providing a decent amount of healthy food to everyone.
As for the idea of indirect assistance via tokens or food stamps: I would wager this is better since the Government can use economies of scale to provide food at low prices. Not to mention: they have quality control over exactly what is offered to the public.
India grows more than enough food to feed all its citizens. I'm glad to see that schemes to provide nutritious meals at subsidized prices to people are finally coming through.