Tamil Nadu's mid-day meal: A recap of the 100-year-old scheme

Tamil Nadu's Mid-Day-Meal scheme

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on August 25 launched the expansion of the state government’s breakfast scheme, at Thirukkuvalai in Nagapattinam district, with the state becoming the first of its kind to provide breakfast at all primary schools.

The Chief Minister had earlier issued orders to expand the scheme to 31,008 government primary schools, across rural and urban areas benefiting about 17 lakh students from classes 1 to 5 at a cost of Rs 404.41 crore.

The Chief Minister’s breakfast scheme was first inaugurated on September 15, 2022, on the occasion of Tamil Nadu's former chief minister C N Annadurai’s birth anniversary in Madurai.

Stalin had earlier announced in the Assembly that the aim behind the initiative is to encourage the economically disadvantaged students to study without hunger, eradicate nutritional deficiency such as vitamin b12 and deficiency diseases such as anemia, and bridge the learning gap.

ALSO READ: This Karnataka primary school offers a sweet deal for 100% attendance

During the last financial budget, the state government had set aside Rs 500 crore to expand the breakfast scheme in all the government primary schools in the state, and said scheme is going to benefit around 1.8 million students of classes 1 to 5 next year.

The Menu

As per the data shared by the state government, the items that are served to the students include rava upma, semiya upma with vegetable sambar, rava khichdi, semiya khichdi, pongal among other items from Monday to Friday.

The menu also includes millets available in the area at least two days a week.

The government is spending around Rs 12.75 a day on every child as part of the breakfast scheme.

Tracing its history through tenures

The Tamil Nadu government is currently following the Puratchi Thalaivar MGR Nutritious Meal Programme, started in the year 1982 is an extension of many pioneering schemes in Tamil Nadu starting way back in 1920, by the Government of Madras Presidency, then ruled by the Justice Party.

Members of the Justice Party, known for radical social reforms, are said to be the first set of politicians also the first set of politicians to think that literacy rate can be improved by alleviating hunger.

P. Theagaraya Chetty (1920)

Explaining the rationale behind the move, Theagaraya Chetty -- the then President of the Justice Party -- said the boys studying at the school were poor, which affected the strength of the institution.

Author R Kannan -- who has long been a commentator of Dravidian Politics -- in his book Anna: The Life and Times of C N Annadurai, called Theagaraya Chetty the father of mid-day meal program.

Initially, only breakfast was provided and the government decided that the total cost of the meal should not exceed Rs 0.06. At the time, there were only 165 students in the school.

In 1920, in the framework Theagaraya Chetty's ideas, A Subbarayalu Reddiar -- the first Chief Minister of Madras Presidency -- launched the mid-day meal scheme in a Corporation school in Thousand Lights, Chennai.

With the subsequent inclusion of four more schools into the scheme, the enrolment in all five schools showed dramatic improvement: from a combined strength of 811 in 1923 to 1,671 in 1925.

However, when the British government disallowed the expenditure on the supply of mid-day meals to students from the Elementary Education Fund, the scheme came to an end on April 1, 1925.

K Kamaraj (1956)

However, in 1956 the scheme was re-implemented by former Chief Minister, K Kamaraj, through a noon-meal scheme which turned out to be a success.

The Budget for 1956-57 contained a provision for supplying mid-day meals to school children from poor families for 200 days a year, initially covering 65,000 students in 1,300 feeding centres.

Rs 10 lakh was allotted for implementing this scheme, with a clause that it should not exceed Rs 18 per child a year.

By 1971, the literacy rate of Tamil Nadu crossed 45 percent as opposed to a mere 20.8 percent in 1951, and in the same period, the female literacy rate got tripled from 10.10 percent to 30.92 percent.

According to a report published by the Hindu on December 7, 1982, when a controversy erupted over who the author of the noon meal scheme was: Theagaraya Chetty or Kamaraj.

The controversy was reportedly triggered by then Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran (MGR), who himself had expanded the scheme.

M G Ramachandran (1982)

MGR's objective shifted from merely increasing the literacy rate to providing nutritious food to maintain the children's health.

He expanded the coverage of the scheme to children in the age group of 2 to 5 years in Anganwadis and those aged 5 to 9 years in primary schools in rural areas in July 1982.

Subsequently, the scheme, now named after him, was extended to urban areas as well.

Since September 1984, students in the age group of 10 to 15 years have been covered under the scheme.

M Karunanidhi (1989)

M Karunanidhi, as Chief Minister during the ephemeral DMK Ministry from 1989 to 1991, introduced the provision of boiled eggs once every fortnight, starting June 1989.

Through 1990 to 2008, the egg count gradually increased from one per week to three per week. The government then decided to provide bananas for the children who would not eat eggs. In 2010, the egg count went up to five every week.

J Jayalalithaa (2013)

The scheme was modified by Jayalalithaa in 2013, with the inclusion of variety meals along with masala eggs as per the children’s choice.

According to a study by three senior researchers of the Gandhigrarn Rural Institute, Madurai -- B.S. Nagarajan, N. Narayanswami and R. Dhandapam -- the meal has accomplished many of its avowed objectives.

They conducted a sample survey of 1,632 children in 12 feeding centres and found, among other things, that parents could go to work secure in the knowledge that their children would be fed and taught well, that over 95 percent of those interviewed felt that tie food was of good quality, that when oppressor and oppressed caste children eat together communal harmony receives a boost, and that attendance in schools has shot up from the usual 45 percent to over 95 percent.