Mid Day Meal program is the world’s largest nutrition related project running in all the primary and primary schools in India. Fresh food is provided at the time of lunch, this food is made in proportion to the nutritional components of the diet prepared by the Mid Day Meal Scheme, so that malnutrition can be avoided in children.
The mid day meal scheme is a school lunch program in India designed to improve the nutritional status of school children across the country. The program provides free meals to children on working days with first and upper grades from the Government, the Government, the local body, the Education Guarantee Program and the Centers for Innovative Alternative Education, Madarsa and Maqtabs supported by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the National Child Work School Project. It is managed by the Ministry of Labor. Serving more than 1.27 million schools and over a million children through Guarantee Program centers, the dinner center is the largest program of its kind in the world.
Mid day meal program (PM poshan): first time started in history
The Intermediate Lunch Program has been implemented in the Union Territory of Pondicherry under French administration since 1930. In post-independent India, the Southern Tamil Nadu Supper Program was started for the first time, initiated by former Minister K. Kamaraj in the early 60s. In 2002, it was proposed in all states under the orders of the Supreme Court of India
Mid day meal program(PM poshan): Latest news about it
The name of the program was changed to PM-POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) program in September 2021, by the MoE (Ministry of Education), which is the team work of the ministry for the program. The central government has also announced that 24 lakh pre-primary students in public and government-subsidized schools will also be included in the program by 2022.
Mid day meal program(PM Poshan) :provisions relating to the constitution
According to art. 24, paragraph 2c[8] of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which India is a party, India is committed to providing children with “food sufficiency for nutrition”. Many changes have been made to the program since 1995. The intermediate program overshadows the National Food Security Act 2013. The Indian School Meals Policy Legislative Program is closely linked to Legal Aid in the United States through the National School. Breakfast Act.
Mid day meal program(PM Roshan) : Who monitors and evaluate MDM
Monitoring and evaluation system of mid day meal programare given below......
- Level Committee Frequency of meeting
- National The national level steering / monitoring committee
- Program Approval Board (PAB) Quarterly
- State The state level steering / monitoring committee Quarterly
- District The district level committee Monthly
- Municipal The municipal committee Monthly
- Block The Mandal level committee Fortnightly
- Village Panchayat level sub-committee Day-to-day functioning of the implementation of the scheme
- School School management and development committee
- Or Parent Teacher Association. Monthly and as when it is Required.
Mid day meal program(PM poshan) : Benefits
The MDM program has many potential benefits: disadvantages for young children (especially girls, Dalits and Adivasis) attending school, improved regularity, nutritional benefits, socialization benefits, and some of the benefits that have been presented to women.
Studies conducted by the committee show that some of these benefits have been achieved. Positive effect of poor children’s schooling (Dreze and Kingdon), on frequency (by Chakraborty, Jayaraman, Pande), on study learning (by Booruah, Afridi and Somanathan), on better intakes nutritional outcomes (Afridi) and on better nutritional outcomes (by Singh, Dercon and Parker.
Mid day meal program(PM Poshan): Some issues with this scheme( highlighted news)
The media also provide evidence of the positive effect of development on women, especially women in distress[44] and the support it provides between parents, children and teachers. The media also highlighted the implementation of various issues including irregularity, corruption, hygiene, caste discrimination, etc.
• In December 2005, Delhi police charged eight traffickers with 2,760 bags of rice intended for primary school children. The rice was transported to India Foods Corporation godowns in Bulandshahr district in North Delhi. The police stopped the investigation and the investigators later arrested them for rice stolen by the NGO.
• In November 2006, residents of the village of Pembong (30 km from Darjeeling) accused a group of teachers of stealing a midday meal. In a written complaint, residents claimed that elementary school students did not receive their midday dinner last year.
• In December 2006, The Times of India reported that school staff were being pumped up to acquire food grains.
• Twenty-three children died in Sati Dharma village in Saran district on July 16, 2013 after eating plague-contaminated meals in the middle of the day. On July 31, 2013, 55 middle school students from an organization fell ill in a village in Kalyuga district of Jamui after a midday lunch provided by the NGO. On the same day, 95 students from Chamandi Primary School in Arwal district were sick after their lunch.
Mid day meal program(PM poshan): Critisis
Despite the program's success, child hunger in India remains a problem. According to current statistics, 42.5% of children under the age of 5 are underweight. Some simple health care services are rare in India, such as the use of iodized salt and vaccination. "India has the largest food insecure population in the world, and more than 500 million people are hungry," the Indian Famine State said. The boys don't have enough to eat, because the show is far from reaching the whole country. “Child malnutrition rates are higher than in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” he noted. India was ranked in the 2009 Global Hunger Index in 65 out of 84 countries. More than 200 million people are hungry in India this year more than any other country in the world. The report states that "in most Indian states, improving child nutrition is of high urgency.
Answer-The Mid-day Meal Scheme was started to provide a cooked mid-day meal on every school day with the nutritional content of 450 calories, 12 gm protein and other micro-nutrients to all children studying in Class I to VIII in government, local body, and government-aided schools.
Answer- Tamil Nadu is a pioneer in introducing midday meal programmes in India to increase the number of children coming to school; K. Kamaraj, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, introduced it first in Chennai and later extended it to all districts of Tamil Nadu.
Answer-Tamil Nadu was the first state to introduce Mid-day meals (MDMS) in 1962 in order to attract children to the school and later it was launched as a centrally sponsored scheme on 15th August 1995.
- Answer-
- avoid classroom hunger.
- increase school enrolment.
- increase school attendance.
- improve socialisation among castes.
- address malnutrition.
- empower women through employment