Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin is all set to launch free breakfast scheme for students from classes 1 to 5 across the state, at an event in Madurai. The scheme, being rolled out on DMK founder and Dravidian stalwart C.N. Annadurai’s birthday, will benefit as many as 1.4 lakh students from 1,545 schools.
The government has asked district administrations across the state to ensure that the scheme is launched without any hiccups in the first phase, and reaches the needy. In a letter to the district collectors and administrative officers, Shambu Kallolikar, principal secretary social welfare department, asked them to select one school in each corporation, municipality, panchayat and hilly areas from the list of schools shortlisted as per GO no 43 of the department, and launch the scheme with the ministers and elected people’s representatives.
In the first phase, 417 schools located in municipal corporations, 163 schools in municipalities, 728 schools in village panchayats, and 237 schools in interior villages and hilly areas will be covered under the scheme at a cost of Rs 34 crores.
In a state which has been the pioneer in social welfare measures, health and education, Stalin has chosen to add another feather in the cap. “Children are the future of any society. I have come across children who can stay back in school to study, even if they get a biscuit or a snack after school hours. This scheme will do wonders. It can change the future of one whole generation,” said R.C. Saraswathi, headmistress at the Ashok Nagar girls high school in Chennai. It was here that Stalin announced the DMK government's plan to launch the breakfast scheme.
Under the morning breakfast scheme, every student is to be provided a cooked meal of 150-500 grams breakfast with sambar with vegetables. According to the officials in the school education department, the breakfast will be prepared with millets available in the region and will be provided to students at least two days every week, based on the daily menu.
The menu includes upma, khichdi, and pongal varieties. The schools can choose from the menu and frame their own package for five days a week, as per the students' health and requirement. Apart from the five days, on Fridays, students will be given a sweet-rava or semiya kesari with the breakfast.
The breakfast scheme, according to social activists and political observers, is yet another milestone in Tamil Nadu’s history after the success of the mid-day meal scheme. “Many children are going to school with out food, breakfast. Biological need is that breakfast is a must for nutrition standard. Girl children don’t eat or eat less, or don’t have time to eat. Huge burden on the exchequer. The children will have a better curriculum and the mental development. Let it be a populist scheme. We should only look at the demographic dividend from this approach,” says Professor S. Janakarajan, formerly with the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). He said that the scheme will improve the literacy rate, enrolment rate and bring down the dropouts in schools. “Nutrition and class promotions have many connections,” he pointed out.
Atleast 43,600 students studying in municipal corporation schools, 17,400 students in schools in the municipalities, 42,800 students in village panchayat limits and more than 10,100 students in remote and hilly areas are likely to benefit through this morning breakfast scheme in the long run.
“It doesn’t attend to vote bank impact directly. It is addressed to the school and the education sector. And when we can spend on gadgets, why don’t we invest on food and nutrition for children. I look at it from a nutrition basis for children. It is quite different in urban upper middle class and in lower middle class. There might be resistance. These policies have universal implications and not sectarian. I suppose this universal approach to this whole policy will benefit the society at large,” says Professor Ramu Manivannan of the Madras University.
In a state like Tamil Nadu, the mid-day meal scheme during MGR regime, along with the additions made by chief ministers like Karunanidhi and Jayalaithaa, have only turned their vote banks more nutritious over the years. For Stalin who harps on federalism, pluralism, social justice and equality, the breakfast scheme could be just the beginning of nutrition being added to his political path as chief minister.
