History
One of the pioneers of the scheme is the city of Madras that started providing cooked meals to children in corporation schools in the city in 1923. The programme was introduced on a large scale in the 1960s under the Chief Ministership of K. Kamaraj after visiting Sourashtra Higher Secondary School – Madurai, where this program had been implemented by the linguistic minority people since 1922. The first major thrust came in 1982 when the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Dr. M. G. Ramachandran, decided to universalize the scheme for all children up to class 10. Tamil Nadu’s midday meal programme is among the best known in the country. Less known, but equally interesting is the history of Pondicherry, which started universal school feeding as early as 1930s.
There is an interesting story about how K. Kamaraj got the idea of a noon meal scheme. He saw a few boys busy with their cows and goats. He asked one small boy, "What are you doing with these cows? Why didn't you go to school?" The boy immediately answered, "If I go to school, will you give me food to eat? I can learn only if I eat." The boy's retort sparked the entire process into establishing the midday meal programme.
Several other states of India also have programmes. The most notable among them is Gujarat that has had it since the late 1980s. Kerala started providing cooked meals in schools since 1995 and so did Madhya Pradesh and Orissa in small pockets. On November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court of India gave a landmark direction to government to provide cooked meals to all children in all government and government assisted primary schools. The direction was resisted vigorously by State governments initially, but the programme has become almost universal by 2005. Recently Govt. of India has launch new Mid day Meal Scheme Website i.e. http://mdm.nic.in
Read more about this topic: Midday Meal Scheme
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