The recent expansion of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme has once again spotlighted the start of the mid-day meal scheme, which has a history of at least 100 years in the State. The expanded breakfast scheme will benefit an estimated 1.7 million students of Classes I to V at about 31,010 government schools. It will involve an expenditure of around ₹404 crore.
When Chief Minister M.K. Stalin launched the scheme at a Madurai Corporation primary school in September last year, it covered around 1.14 lakh students at 1,545 schools. Among these schools are 417 municipal corporation schools, 163 municipality schools and 728 taluk and village panchayat-level schools. A sum of ₹33.56 crore was set apart then. According to the materials in The Hindu Archives, on November 16, 1920, the first step was taken to provide tiffin to students of a school of the Madras Corporation (now the Greater Chennai Corporation) at Thousand Lights. It was then called an experimental measure.
Theagaraya Chetty’s decision
P. Theagaraya Chetty (1852-1925), one of the founders of the Justice Party, had chaired a meeting of the Council of the Corporation in his capacity as president (equivalent to the post of Mayor). He emphasised that the students being poor affected the strength of the institution greatly. It was decided that the cost of tiffin should not exceed “one anna per pupil per day”, according to a report in The Hindu on November 17, 1920.
After four more Corporation schools were brought under the mid-day meal scheme, the student strength of all the schools went up, from 811 in 1922-23 to 1,671 in 1924-25. But the scheme came to an end on April 1, 1925, as the British government did not permit the expenditure to be incurred from the Elementary Education Fund. However, the scheme was revived two years later. It benefited around 1,000 poor students of 25 schools. At the time of Independence, the number of beneficiaries rose to 8,000.
K. Kamaraj becoming the Chief Minister in 1954 paved the way for certain initiatives in education. The mid-day meal scheme was taken up on a voluntary basis in other parts of the State, too, in July 1956. This was at the initiative of “enterprising officers of the Education Department”, as this paper described in a report on August 15, 1966, with the support of “enthusiastic members” of the public. It was launched at Ettayapuram (now part of Thoothukudi district), the birthplace of poet-freedom fighter Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), who had strongly highlighted, through his literary works, the urgency of abolishing poverty and hunger.
Aid from CARE
An American organisation, Co-operative for American Remittances Everywhere, popularly known as CARE, was once associated closely with the scheme. It provided rice, milk powder, cornmeal, vegetable oil and whole grain wheat. At an event in August 1961, the then U.S. Ambassador and reputed economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, handed over a packet of milk powder to Kamaraj to mark the presentation of the first consignment of food materials.
At the end of 10 years, the scheme had benefited 1.65 million poor students of 28,840 elementary schools (out of a total of 30,554 schools). At that time, the annual cost was around ₹2.78 crore. The government’s share of the cost was about ₹1.67 crore and the rest were public contributions.
In December 1974, the then Education Minister, V.R. Nedunchezhian, was quoted by this newspaper as saying that the State government had been spending ₹4 crore every year on the mid-day meal programme. CARE had been extending aid amounting to ₹6 crore a year. More than 1.6 million children of 30,000 elementary schools were fed for about 200 days in a year.
A fillip from MGR
The scheme got a fillip in July 1982 when AIADMK founder and then Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) inaugurated an improved version of the scheme at a village in Tiruchi district. This time, the scheme covered children aged 2-10 below the poverty line. Many beneficiaries, who were being fed for 200 days a year at 15 paise per capita, would get food worth 45 paise for all the 365 days. Those in the age-group of 10-14, already covered by the mid-day meal scheme, were also brought under it.
In 1982, it was estimated that 6.3 million poor children would benefit. Since September 1984, the scheme — now named after MGR — has been benefiting students up to the age of 15 years.
Boiled eggs and variety meals
M. Karunanidhi, as the Chief Minister of the short-lived DMK government (1989-91), introduced the provision of boiled eggs every fortnight, starting from June 1989. During Jayalalithaa’s stint as Chief Minister (2011-16), variety meals were included in the menu in 2013, along with masala eggs as per the children’s choice.
According to the Policy Note of the Social Welfare and Women Empowerment Department for 2023-24, the scheme is being implemented at 43,094 noon-meal centres, with 4.47 millions being fed every day. An amount of ₹2,655.26 crore has been set apart in the current year’s Budget Estimates, of which the State government’s share is ₹2,203.65 crore and the Centre’s share is ₹451.61 crore.
