Mid-Day Meal Scheme - Guru Deekshaa Academy

To improve nutritional levels among school going children studying in Classes I to VIII of Government, Government – aided schools, Special Training centres (STC) and Madarasas and Maktabs supported under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
The MDMS is the world’s largest school meal programme and reaches an estimated 12 crore children across 12 lakh schools in India.
The MDMS emerged out of the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP – NSPE), a centrally sponsored scheme formulated in 1995 to improve enrollment, attendance and retention by providing free food grains to government run primary schools.

How it is implemented ?

The scheme guidelines envisage to provide cooked mid-day meal with 450 calories and 12 g of protein to every child at primary level and 700 calories and 20 g of protein at upper primary level.
Monitoring and Evaluation
- A National Steering cum Monitoring Committee and a Programme Approval Board have been established at the national level, to monitor the programme, conduct impact assessments, coordinate between state governments and provide policy advice to central and state governments.
- Review Missions consisting of representatives from central and state governments and non governmental agencies have been established.
- In addition, independent monitoring institutions such as state universities and research institutions monitor the implementation of the scheme.
- At the state level, a three tier monitoring mechanism exists in the form of state, district and block level steering cum monitoring committees.
- Gram panchayats and municipalities are responsible for day to day supervision and may assign the supervision of the programme at the school level to the Village Education Committee, School Management and Development Committee or Parent Teacher Association.

Funding Pattern:

The cost of the MDMS is shared between the central and state governments.
The central government provides free food grains to the states.
The cost of cooking, infrastructure development, transportation of food grains and payment of honorarium to cooks and helpers is shared by the centre with the state governments.
The central government provides a greater share of funds. The contribution of state governments differs from state to state.
Subsidy for transportation of food grains is provided to 11 special category states at PDS rate prevalent in these states and up to a maximum of Rs.75.00 per quintal for other than special categories States/UTs.

Challenges: