Unit costs

What a rupee
actually buys

Sixteen lines. Everything this organisation does reduces to one of them, and every number on the rest of the site is worked out from this page. Each figure carries a flag saying where it came from.

0/16figures with a published source behind them

Most of these are placeholders, and they say so. On a demonstration site there is no kitchen ledger to read them out of. The one real anchor is the mid-day meal cost published by Akshaya Patra, which the evening-meal figure is reasoned against rather than copied from. Every one of these has to be replaced with the client's own audited figure before this goes live.

Showing all 16 lines

₹28
Daily kitchen
A hot evening meal
Rice or bhakri, a dal, a seasonal vegetable, and an egg or sprouts twice a week. Cooked in our own kitchen and eaten at the centre, not carried home, because a meal carried home gets shared five ways.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. For scale: Akshaya Patra publish a cost of Rs 14.33 per mid-day plate, of which a state government pays Rs 5.87. An evening meal carries no state subsidy and one kitchen has no economies of scale, so it costs more. Confirm against the client's own kitchen accounts before publishing.
₹350
Health & sight
An annual health check
Height, weight, haemoglobin, teeth, ears, eyes. Run at the centre by a visiting doctor so no parent has to lose a day's wage taking a child to a clinic.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against what the visiting doctor and the lab actually charge.
₹460
Learning centres
A year of workbooks
Our own graded Marathi and maths workbooks, printed locally. A child writes in them, so they are not passed down.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's printing quote.
₹620
Daily kitchen
A month of evening meals for one child
Twenty-two centre days. The month is the honest unit here, not the meal — a child who eats on eleven days out of twenty-two has not been fed.
DerivedDERIVED from the meal cost above (Rs 28 x 22 centre days). Inherits its placeholder status.
₹700
Health & sight
An eye test and a pair of spectacles
We screen every child once a year. Roughly one in fourteen needs glasses, and almost none of them knew it — they had been told they were slow.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER for both the cost and the one-in-fourteen figure. Replace the ratio with the client's own screening data, which they will have.
₹720
Health & sight
A year of sanitary pads
Handed out at the centre with no ceremony and no assembly about it. Attendance in Classes 8 to 10 is the measure we watch.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's bulk purchase price.
₹850
Learning centres
A school kit
A bag, two uniforms, shoes, and a year of notebooks. Handed out in June, because a child who arrives in a torn uniform in week one usually stops arriving by week six.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's last procurement invoice — this moves a lot with uniform prices.
₹1,000
Learning centres
A Class 10 board exam fee
The single cheapest place to stop a dropout. A child who has done nine and a half years and cannot find the exam fee in February loses all of it.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER, and deliberately rounded up. The Maharashtra State Board SSC fee itself is lower; the rest is the form, the photographs, the travel to the centre and the practical fees. Confirm the current year's figure with the board and the school.
₹1,900
Learning centres
A year's bus pass for a girl in Class 8 or above
The nearest secondary school is four kilometres away. Families who will let a boy walk it will not let a girl, and that single fact ends more girls' schooling here than fees do.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against current PMPML student concession rates.
₹2,900
Learning centres
A term at a learning centre
Four months of two hours a day, six days a week, in a group of no more than eighteen. Covers the teacher's time, the room, the light and the books.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's per-centre cost divided by enrolment.
₹4,200
Mothers' livelihoods
A three-month tailoring course for a mother
Machine time, thread, a trainer, and the certificate that lets her take work from the units in Ramtekdi rather than piece-rate at home.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's course costing.
₹6,700
Daily kitchen
A year of evening meals for one child
Two hundred and forty days of eating, including the summer weeks when school shuts and the free meal at school stops with it.
DerivedDERIVED from the meal cost above (Rs 28 x 240 days). Inherits its placeholder status.
₹8,400
Learning centres
A year at a learning centre
A full academic year for one child, meals not included. This is the number we use internally when we decide whether we can take another child on.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's audited per-child cost.
₹9,500
Learning centres
A month's rent on one centre
Two rooms and a toilet, on a lane children can reach without crossing a highway. The unglamorous line that no one wants to fund and nothing works without.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's rent agreements.
₹12,000
Mothers' livelihoods
A year of running one savings group
Twelve to twenty women, meeting fortnightly, keeping their own books. We pay for the facilitator and the audit, not the fund — the fund is theirs.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's facilitator costs.
₹18,000
Learning centres
A month of a centre teacher's pay
Almost all of our teachers grew up in these lanes and went through these centres. We pay them properly because the alternative is training somebody every eighteen months.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Must be replaced with the client's actual payroll figure — publishing a wrong salary is a problem with staff, not just with donors.