The national Mid-Day Meal Scheme in government and aided has now been extended and it will now be known as ‘PM POSHAN’. Under this scheme, students of Bal-Vatikas or Pre-primary classes along with school children studying in classes 1 to 8 in government and government-aided schools. The approval has come out in a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA). The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where Union Cabinet decided to initiate the program to benefit 11.2 lakh government and government-aided schools throughout the country.

Earlier the scheme was known as Mid-Day meal scheme. Under PM-POSHAN (POshan SHakti Nirman) scheme, the hot-cooked meals will be provided to the students of government and government-aided schools from 2021-22 to 2025-26. According to Union Minister Anurag Thakur said that the scheme will be continued for five years and Rs 1.31 lakh crores will be spent. The scheme will cover about 11.80 crore children studying in 11.20 lakh schools across the country will be benefitted.

According to the government, the scheme has been approved with the investment of Rs 54,061 crores from the Central Government and Rs 31,733.17 crores from the State and UT governments. The education minister has informed that the additional cost of Rs 45,000 crores on food grains will be borne by the Central Government so the total budget will be Rs 1,30, 794. 90 crores for this scheme. In order to ensure quality, the social audit will be mandatory for all districts. There will be provision for supplementary nutrition items to children in districts where Anemia is highly prevalent. 

Key Features:

• ‘Tithi Bhojan’ will be started to encourage people from the community to provide special food to the children on special occasions and festivals.
• Promotion of ‘School nutritious gardens’ will help harvest form ‘School nutrition gardens’ to be used for cooking meals for the children.
• Cooking competitions will be encouraged from village level to national level to promote ethnic cuisine and innovative menus.
• Farmers Producer Organizations (FPO) and Women Self Help Groups will be involved to implement the scheme across the nation.   

Mid-Day meal scheme was launched in 1995. It is was a school meal program for the students that aimed at providing nutritious food for children in schools. The scheme includes the provision of free lunches for students studying in primary, upper primary classes in government or government-supported schools on working days. Under this scheme, around 120,000,000 students in 1,265,000 schools are served nutritious food. Now the scheme has been changed into PM POSHAN scheme in September 2021. Children at an early age require food with high nutritional values for their growth and development. In India, there is a large number of populations who have limited resources to fulfill the needs of their families. Children from such families barely have food twice a day, what to say about nutrition. The initiation of such a scheme will not only provide nutritious food to children but also encourage the community to participate in the welfare of children.