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Mid-day Meal Scheme And Its Challenges

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The Mid-Day Meal Scheme is an Indian school lunch program created to improve the nutritional status of school-age children across the country. The program is now renamed as POSHAN Scheme. Children in government primary and upper primary schools, government-aided Anganwadis, Madarsa, and Maqtabs receive free lunches on working days as part of the program.

Table of Contents:

  • What is the Mid-Day Meal Scheme?
  • The Goal of the Mid-day Meal Scheme
  • Implementation of the Mid-day Meal Scheme
  • Features of the Mid-day Meal Scheme
  • Challenges of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme
  • Criticism of the Mid-day Meal Scheme
  • FAQs on the Mid-Day Meal Scheme and its Challenges

What is the Mid-Day Meal Scheme?

The Midday Meal Scheme is the biggest program of its kind in the world, feeding 120 million kids in more than 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme locations. On August 15, 1995, India’s “National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE)”—a program designed to support primary education—began functioning. The ‘National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools,’ often known as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, replaced the NP-NSPE in October 2007. Recently, milk was encouraged to be included with children’s midday meals by India’s vice president.

The Goal of the Mid-day Meal Scheme

The Mid-Day Meal scheme’s primary goals are as follows:

  • Increase the enrollment of students from underprivileged backgrounds in schools.
  • Increasing enrollment leads to higher school attendance.
  • To keep children in grades 1-8 enrolled.
  • To give nutritional help to elementary school children in drought-affected communities.
  • The government is also considering establishing nutrition gardens on school grounds, including student participation.
  • Cooking competitions based on local ingredients could also be staged as part of the initiative to promote ethnic food and unique menus.
  • The revised system will focus on monitoring schoolchildren’s nutritional status in addition to providing healthful meals.
  • Special supplies for nutritious goods would be made in districts with a high prevalence of anemia
  • A nutritional expert will be assigned to each school to guarantee that pupils’ BMI, weight, and hemoglobin levels are checked. 

Implementation of Mid-day Meal Scheme

It is carried out using one of three models:

  • Decentralized model: Meals prepared on-site by local cooks, self-help groups, and so on.
  • Centralized model: Instead of local on-site cooks, an external entity makes food and delivers it to schools in this model.
  • International aid: Various international charitable groups assist government schools.

Features of the Mid-day Meal Scheme

Salient features of Mid-Day Meal Scheme are as follows:

  1. The state’s Food and Drug Administration department can collect samples to ensure the meals’ quality and nutritional content.
  2. For cooking the mid-day meals in the schools, quality goods bearing AGMARK are bought.
  3. Every school must have a sanitary cooking infrastructure in place for sanitary mid-day meals.
  4. Overall days of work of the school, mid-day lunches are to be offered solely on the school campus.
  5. Due to the expiration of the mid-day food budget, the headmaster or headmistress may use school finances. However, as soon as the school is credited with the funds, they will be repaid to the mid-day food fund.
  6. The scheme’s implementation will be supervised by the State Steering-cum Monitoring Committee (SSMC), which would include the implementation of a mechanism to ensure the meals’ quality and nutritional parameters.
  7. The cooked meals prepared by the school administration committee are tasted by two or three adult members.
  8. Class 6-8 students from 3,479 Educationally Backwards Blocks (EBBs) were included in the scheme in 2007.

Challenges of Mid-Day Meal Scheme

Despite the many successes, there are a lot of challenges with this scheme’s implementation:

  1. This scheme’s main flaw is that it requires the teachers to dedicate two or three hours to putting it into practice.
  2. Due to the participation of the teachers in the plan, students’ study time, and educational quality deteriorate.
  3. Most government primary schools in remote areas have a small student population, hence the long-term viability of this plan is likewise at risk.
  4. The number of students attending government schools has been negatively impacted by the accessibility of a good, easy-to-use transportation system that is handled by primary schools.
  5. The majority of states did not adhere to the instructions of the Government of India to deliver food grains at the school point by PDS dealer, which led to a leakage in the supply chain and the adulteration and theft of the food grains supplied, according to the Planning Commission’s report on the performance evaluation of the cooked Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
  6. A different survey also found that the majority of schools lacked the necessary basic facilities for meal preparation. Some schools lack an adequate kitchen, storage space, and a reliable source of clean water, which has an impact the meal’s quality in a negative way.
  7. The interruption of food grain supply in Uttar Pradesh, led to a number of days when meals were not prepared in schools, as shown in the report of the 5th joint Review mission on the Mid-Day Meal Scheme in 2013. This has a negative impact on the nutrient intake of children.
  8. One of the few studies that specifically focused on access for Dalits was that of Throrat and Lee in 2005. They discover that in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, Dalit children’s access to MDMs is limited by the fact that the meals are typically served in hamlets belonging to dominant castes.
  9. Discrimination also occurs when children of various castes are served different foods or segregated sitting. In Rajasthan, children from the lower caste had to be served water by other children, whereas the other children were free to help themselves. In Bihar, plates were marked with the child’s caste’s initials.
  10. In The 2003 Dalit Studies Institute of India research, 37% of respondents in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh claim caste discrimination in MDMs, while 48% indicate hatred toward Dalit chefs, according to research. The recent deaths of 23 children from eating poisonous foods provided to them by MDMs have raised doubts about this program.

Criticism of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme

Below are some of the shortcomings of the scheme:

  1. According to the National Family Health Survey 2015-16, 39% of children are chronically undernourished.
  2. The quality of food is frequently contested, with many media reports mentioning children’s health decreasing due to the food served at midday meals.
  3. The disadvantage of linking Aadhaar to the noon meal scheme is that it limits children’s access to the MDMS because many do not have Aadhaar cards.
  4. Discrimination based on caste undermines MDMS’s goal – According to the National Campaign for Dalit Rights’ 2008 Report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, midday meals are typically served in upper-caste communities, and during times of caste tensions, Dalit children are denied the meal to assert the dominance of these upper caste communities.
  5. Despite such integrated child development plans, India has serious problems such as child stunting, child mortality, child wasting, and malnutrition. The same may be said for India’s ranking of 94 in the Global Hunger Index 2020.

FAQs on Mid-Day Meal Scheme and its Challenges

1. What is the new name of Mid-Day meal Scheme?

Answer:

The Mid Day Meal Scheme is an Indian school lunch program created to improve the nutritional status of school-age children across the country. The program is currently known by the name POSHAN Scheme.

2. When was the Mid-day Meal Scheme launched?

Answer:

The Mid-Day Meal Scheme was launched in India on August 15, 1995, as part of the ‘National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE).’ In October 2007, the NP-NSPE was renamed the ‘National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools,’ also known as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. Recently, India’s Vice President advocated including milk in children’s mid-day meals.

3. What are the models of implementation of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme?

Answer:

It is carried out using one of three models:

  • Decentralized model – Meals prepared on-site by local cooks, self-help groups, and so on.
  • Centralized model – Instead of local on-site cooks, an external entity makes food and delivers it to schools in this model.
  • International aid – A variety of international charitable groups assist government schools.

4. Which ministry launched the Mid-Day Meal Scheme?

Answer:

The scheme was implemented by the Ministry of Education (formerly known as the Ministry of Human Resources and Development).

5. What is PM Poshan Yojana?

Answer:

The Ministry of Education’s Department of School Education & Literacy sponsors PM POSHAN at the national level. Under this program, students attending government and government-aided schools will receive one hot, home-cooked meal per day.
 



Last Updated : 24 Aug, 2023
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