Glimpse of Mid-Day Meal Scheme in India

• World’s largest school feeding program. – 12 crore Children in 12.65 lakhs schools/ Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) Centres.
• Mid-day meal program introduced by Madras Municipal Corporation in 1925 for disadvantaged children (for linguistic minority, not universalized)
• After Independence it was first introduced in Tamil Nadu in 1960 by the then Chief Minister K.Kamraj and universalized in 1982 for all children’s up to class 10.
• Gujarat, Kerala and UT of Pondicherry also universalized the scheme in 1980.
• Supreme Court judgement in 2001 made it mandatory for all states to implement the scheme. After initial resistance from several states it was universalized in India in 2005.

• Cooked mid-day meal with 300 calories and 8-12g of protein for all children’s in class 1-5 in Government and Aided schools and EGS/AIE centres.
• Cooking cost at Rs.1 per child
• Transport subsidy increased to Rs.100 from Rs.50 per quintal for special category states and Rs.75 to other states.
•  Management, monitoring and evaluation costs at 2% of the cost of food grains, transport subsidy and cooking assistance.
•  Provision of mid-day meal during summer vacation in drought affected areas.

•       Cooking cost revised per child per school day revised. In NER region it was revised to Rs.1.80 with the state contribution of Rs.0.20 and in other states it was revised to Rs.1.50 with the state contribution of Rs.0.50.

•     Included students in upper primary classes (6-8) in Educationally Backward Blocks (EBB) under the scheme.

•  Revision done in October 2007 is universalized to all children’s studying in Government, local body and Government-Aided primary and upper primary schools and the EGS/AIE centres including Madarasa and Maqtabs supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)

•       Food norms revised to supply balanced and nutritious diet to upper primary students by increasing pulses (25to 30g), vegetables (65-75g) and reducing oil and fat (10-7.5g)
•        Cooking cost increased periodically.
•     Honorarium for cooks and helpers were paid from labour and other administrative charges.
•        Separate component of honorarium of Rs.1000 per cook cum helper.
•     Norms for cook cum helper introduced. One cook-cum helper for schools up to 25 students, two cooks cum helpers with 26 to 100 students and additional cook-cum helper for every addition of up to 100 students.
•    Construction of Kitchen cum store is sponsored by the central government. It is prescribed for schools having children’s up to 100 to use plinth area of 20 sq.mt and for every additional up to 100 children 4 sq.mt plinth area will be added. Cost of construction will provided on the basis of state schedule price.

•   Budget allocation for the year 2013 – Rs.13215 crores (Budget estimate).  (In 2012-13 Budget estimate was Rs.11937 crores, revised estimate was Rs.11160.24 Crores).
• Under Ministry of HRD. Dr. Pallam Raju is the minister of HRD and Shashi Tharoor is the minister of state . 
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Food norm with effect from 1-12-2009
S. No.	Items	Quantity per day/Child
		Primary	Upper Primary
1	Foodgrains	100 gms	150 gms
2	Pulses	20 gms	30 gms
3	Vegetables (leafy also)	50 gms	75 gms
4	Oil & fat	5 gms	7.5 gms
5	Salt & condiments	As per need	As per need

Revised Cooking cost per child per school day w.e.f. 1.07.2012
Stage	Total Cost	Central-State Sharing
		Non-NER States (75:25)		NER-State (90:10)
		Central	State	Central	State
Primary	Rs. 3.11	Rs. 2.33	Rs. 0.78	Rs. 2.80	Rs. 0.31
Upper Primary	Rs. 4.65	Rs. 3.49	Rs. 1.16	Rs. 4.19	Rs. 0.47

• Education Secretaries meeting at national level – Met in June, 2013
• National Steering cum monitoring Committee (NSMC) – Last met in December 2012 under the Chairmanship of Secretary, School Education and Literacy (Dr.Prema Ramachandran, Director, Nutrition Foundation of India).
• State Steering- cum-monitoring Committee (SSMC)
• State wise monitoring mechanisms.

•           23 Children’s died in a mid-day meal tragedy in Saran district, Bihar.
•          155 students fell ill after consuming contaminated food in Neyveli, Tamil Nadu

•    Training parents to ensure and monitor quality, infrastructure, supply storage and nutritional standards.
•    In March 2013, a pilot social audit was launched in Andhra Pradesh by rural development ministry was done by the Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency (SSAAT) in 40 schools of in Khammam and Chitoor districts.

• Teaching about how to file RTI and avail information from public departments.
• Explaining the various government orders and difficulties in welfare schemes reaching the target people.
• Teaching them about how to cross-verify government records.

• Parents who are already in the school management committee mandated by the RTE act, 2009 were made to verify quality of rice and food served to children, inspect the cooking area, adequacy of cooking cost per child and appointment of cook cum helper.
• Parents where taught to question the system and they themselves suggested ways for better implementation.
•  Cook cum helpers mentioned their difficulties with respect to low cost per child and monthly honorarium, which were later revised after the meeting.

•      Tamil Nadu offers the maximum in cost per child. It spends Rs. 6.31 per primary child and Rs.6.51 per upper primary child.
•      Implemented effective community participation with Vigilance committee in Panchayat levels which includes parents of students, local representatives and teachers.
•     Payment of Noon-Meal Organiser was made Rs. 7000 per month and Rs. 5000 for helper and they are provided with pension benefits.

• They have participation of parents in the scheme, but they were not trained like that in Chitoor district. So they don’t have any idea about social auditing.
•  Cost per child and payments for Cooker cum helper need to be increased like that in the case of Tamil Nadu.

•           Monitoring institutions in grass root level.
•           Transparency and accountability from those who are responsible for delivering.
•           Providing access to information for those who involve in social audit
•           Ensuring they engage in verification (social audit).
•           Providing a platform to voice their findings and grievances (social audit).
•           Exercising their audit in threat free environment.
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