Mid-Day Meal Scheme in India

Mid-day meal scheme in India includes the provision of lunch free of cost to all government school students on all working days. Some important objectives of this scheme include reducing classroom hunger, increasing enrolment, having attendance, improved socialization, inclusivity, and addressing malnutrition. It is also involved in social empowerment by providing employment to women under the mid-day meal scheme. This is the largest meals scheme and is very popular in India but it faces many challenges like gross irregularities and casteism. Despite facing challenges, it has achieved a lot in fighting malnutrition and improving enrolment in government schools making government schools competitive to some of the top schools in Delhi and other best schools in India.   

Challenges In Mid-Day Meals Scheme

Poor Quality Of Food

There are so many complaints regarding the poor quality of food in the mid-day meal scheme. The food supplied to students of government schools in India is not sufficient to meet the required nutritional standards. Along with the quality, there is discriminated supply of meals regarding the quantity. There can be many reasons for this. One of the major reasons can be undedicated workers and officials as some of them may try to make a profit out of this government scheme. At some point in the hierarchy, there is something irrelevant and the mid-day meal scheme is facing challenges regarding its proper management and delivery.

Gross Irregularities

Actual children being benefitted from the mid-day meal scheme are very less compared to that furnished by the states to the Ministry of Human Resources to claim the costs of cooking and food grains. Inflated transportation facility to schools is the other major irregularity in the mid-day meal scheme. This along with other gross irregularities is leading to a consistent decline of the enrolment of students in government schools. 

Casteism

The claws of casteism are definitely prevalent in the mid-day meal scheme in India. Some student bodies during their visits to some government schools have found the practice of casteism during the mid-day meal scheme. They have reported about the caste discrimination between the dalits or other lower caste students and upper caste students of the school. Some lower caste students are not even allowed to serve food to upper caste fellows or they are not even considered to be mere equals. This kind of discrimination is the prime reason for the dropout of nearly 20% of government school students.