Midday Meal Scheme

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The Midday Meal Scheme, or PM-Poshan Shakti Nirman in Hindi, is a free school meal programme in India designed to enhance the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in government primary and upper primary schools, government-aided anganwadis (pre-school), madrasas and maqtabs. Serving 120 million children in over 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, the Midday Meal Scheme is the largest of its kind in the world. In 1920, A. Subbarayalu Reddiar, the first Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency, introduced the mid-day meal scheme in a Corporation school in the Thousand Lights area. The initiative was based on the idea proposed by P. Theagaraya Chetty, who was serving as the President of the Justice Party at the time. The Midday Meal Scheme has been implemented in the Union Territory of Puducherry under the French Administration since 1930. In post-independent India, the Midday Meal Scheme was first launched in Tamil Nadu, pioneered by the former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj in the early 1960s. By 2002, the scheme was implemented in all of the states under the orders of the Supreme Court of India. In 2021, the Central Government announced that an additional 2.4 million students receiving pre-primary education at government and government-aided schools would also be included under the scheme by 2022. Under article 24, paragraph 2c of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a party, India has committed to yielding "adequate nutritious food" for children. The programme has undergone many changes since its launch in 1995. The Midday Meal Scheme is covered by the National Food Security Act, 2013. The legal backing for the Indian school meal programme is akin to the legal backing provided in the US through the National School...