Deepali Sharma

Healthy Learning: Evaluating India's Mid-day Meal Programme for Educational Attainment Deepali Sharma

The Mid Day Meal Scheme is a multi-faceted programme of the Government of India that, among other things, seeks to address issues of food security, lack of nutrition and access to education on a pan nation scale. It involves provision for free lunch on working days for children in Primary and Upper Primary Classes in Government schools. The primary objective of the scheme is to provide hot cooked meal to children of primary and upper primary classes.[2] with other objectives of improving nutritional status of children, encouraging poor children, belonging to disadvantaged sections, to attend school more regularly and help them concentrate on classroom activities, thereby increasing the enrollment, retention and attendance rates. The success and failure of the programme can be accessed by studying it's performance in certain states and thus evaluating it's effect on educational enrollment