Upon completion of our survey of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) in two states a few months ago – the names of which shall be revealed in due course of time! – my colleagues Ambrish and Mehjabeen shared their thoughts on how monitoring of the MDMS can be improved (see here and here). Since we’re now immersed in the analysis of our survey data, let me take some time to share with you what the literature available on the scheme tells us so far.

Pioneered by the Government of Tamil Nadu in 1956 and launched nationally in 1995 as the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education, the MDMS only began to be implemented in earnest in government schools across the country after 2001. In a landmark judgment in November 2001, the Supreme Court directed the Government of India to provide “cooked meals” to all primary school children within the next six months. Till that point, school-going children were either being provided with dry rations (grain) or with a cooked meal – with this being left at the discretion of each state. While initial teething problems were experienced, including a lack of initiative from state governments (especially in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh) and a lack of provision of physical infrastructure , most states had begun large-scale implementation of the scheme by 2004 (Drèze and Goyal, 2003). By 2006, the scheme covered 120 million children across the country, making it the largest school-feeding programme in the world (Khera, 2006).

Potential Benefits

The objectives and potential benefits of the MDM scheme are three-fold: increased enrolment, attendance and retention; improved child nutrition; and social equity (Drèze and Goyal, 2003; Khera, 2006).

Enrolment, Attendance and Retention: The first objective of the MDMS is to increase enrolment and daily class participation by entitling all enrolled children to a hot, cooked nutritious meal at school. Si and Sharma (2008) examined school-level data to find that in Khurda district of Orissa, the gender gap in enrolment decreased considerably between 1995-96 and 2000-01, when cooked meals were provided to the students rather than dry rations. More specifically, during this period the average annual growth rate in enrolment of girls was 3.86%, while that for boys stood at 3.71%. Drèze and Goyal (2003) acknowledge that there may be factors other than MDM at play when they compare school enrolment across nine districts each in Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, and Rajasthan. However, the period they consider falls immediately after the MDM was introduced and they find that enrolment in Class I increased significantly between July 2001 and July 2012 by 14.5%; in particular for girls, it rose by 19%. More rigorously using econometric techniques (rather than just descriptive school data), Afridi (2011) finds that the introduction of the MDMS raised the average monthly attendance of girls in Class 1 by 10 percentage points, significantly closing the gender gap.

Improved child nutrition: The second major objective of the MDMS is improved child nutrition and the elimination of ‘classroom hunger’ (Drèze and Goyal, 2003; Singh et al, 2012). According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, (FAO), “nutritional well-being is recognised both as a primary objective of development and an important input into the social and economic development process.” A wide range of literature documents how under- and malnutrition can have severe negative impacts on a child’s physical well-being, continuing well into adulthood (for instance, see Black et al., 2008; Alderman et al., 2003, Svedberg, 2000; and Gaiha, Jha & Kulkarni 2010). In particular, using longitudinal data from Pakistan, Alderman et al. (1997) show that with better nutrition among pre-school children, not only does school enrolment rise but more importantly, there are greater productivity gains than would’ve been expected otherwise.¹ In the context of the MDMS in India, Afridi (2010) has attempted to quantify the improvement in daily nutrient intake of children availing the meals in Madhya Pradesh to find that it increased from 49% to 100%. In particular, she finds that “per school day the scheme improved nutritional intakes by reducing the daily protein deficiency of a primary school student by 100%, the calorie deficiency by almost 30% and the daily iron deficiency by nearly 10%. In the short-run, therefore, the programme can have a substantial effect on reducing hunger at school and protein-energy malnutrition” of children availing the scheme. Even more recently in Andhra Pradesh, using longitudinal data from the Young Lives project, Singh et al (2012) find that the MDMS acts as a safety net for children in drought-stricken areas. They find that the negative health impacts of a drought, as nutritional intake falls, are in fact significantly compensated by the MDMS, which is mandated to be served even on non-school days in drought-prone areas. In particular, the authors find that in the younger of two cohorts studied, children not affected by drought gained an additional 0.069 standard deviations in weight-for-age indicator; in contrast, those who were affected by drought gained an additional 0.169 standard deviations.

Thus, it can be seen that the MDMS has immense potential to increase the nutritional intake of beneficiaries; but of course, the impact of the scheme is highly dependent on the quantity and quality of the meals served, which still varies greatly from state to state (Khera, 2006).

Social equity: Apart from enhancing school participation and nutritional intake, the MDMS has been envisioned as a programme which can reduce caste- and class-based discrimination among school-children, thereby promoting social equity. However, studies such as Drèze and Goyal (2003), Khera (2006), and Thorat and Lee (2005) show that subtle – and in some cases, outright – forms of discrimination still exist in various parts of the country. Discrimination within the MDMS takes on two forms: 1. segregation of children during meal times on the basis of caste, and 2. opposition to the appointment of dalits as cooks. Drèze and Goyal (2003) found that subtle forms of prejudice and discrimination were still prevalent among upper-caste parents, especially in Rajasthan, where they often sent their children with packed food or asked them to come home for lunch, to avoid eating with lower caste children. In 2005, Thorat and Lee studied discrimination against dalits within the MDMS and the Public Distribution System in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. They found that in those areas where accessibility for dalits is higher, there was less prejudice and exclusion on the basis of caste.

Financing the MDMS

As noted earlier, the potential positive impacts of the MDMS are dependent on the quantity and quality of the meals served. These are, in turn, dependent on the budget provided by the Centre and the states to implement the scheme. According to the minutes of the National Review Meeting with State/Union Territory Secretaries and Nodal Officers held in July 2012, Rs. 11, 937 crores have been allocated for the implementation of the MDMS for the current financial year. Of this, 53% has been allocated towards cooking cost, which is used to buy cooking ingredients such as pulses, vegetables, spices, and fuel, and does not include costs for rice and wheat for which separate allocations are made by the Centre. (Government of India, 2012). The MDMS is a Centrally-Sponsored Scheme, and cooking costs are shared in a ratio of 75:25 between the Centre and the states. Over the past few years, the budget for the MDMS has been steadily rising and MDMS allocations in fact increased by 16% between 2008-09 and 2012-13 (Kapur and Chowdhury, 2012). Similarly, expenditure rates have also improved, increasing from 80% in 2007-08 to 94% in 2009-10. However, there are wide inter-state variations: for instance, Chhattisgarh spent more than 90% of its cooking cost allocations in 2010-11; in contrast, Bihar only spent 67% of its allocations that same year, while Jharkhand spent an even lower 38% (Kapur and Chowdhury, 2012).

Thus, the efficiency with which funds are utilised is crucial to realising the objectives of the MDMS. As pointed out by Khera (2006), inadequate budgetary allocations, as well as inefficient spending, would seriously hamper the quantity and quality of mid-day meals. In turn, insufficient and/or unappetising/low nutritional value meals would not only have a direct negative impact on the nutritional intake of beneficiaries, but also on enrolment and attendance and retention. The experience of states such as Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, where the scheme has been expanded to include older children, pregnant women and the elderly, clearly shows that with a proactive and robust administrative system and adequate staff at the school-level the benefits of the scheme can be immense. Recent quantitative analysis (Afridi, 2010 & 2011; Singh et al, 2012) also demonstrates the significant gains to be made in school participation, classroom productivity, educational attainment, and nutritional intake of children. Watch this space to find out soon what the PAISA survey reveals about the MDMS!

References

Kapur, A. and A. Chowdhury, (2012), “Mid-Day Meal Scheme, GOI, 2012-13,” Budget Briefs Mid-Day Meal, Vol. 4, Issue 4, New Delhi: Accountability Initiative.

Afridi, F., (2010), “Child Welfare Programmes and Child Nutrition: Evidence from a Mandated School Meal Programme in India,” Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 92, No. 2, pp., 152-165. Discussion Paper available at: <http://www.isid.ac.in/~pu/dispapers/dp10-02.pdf>.

Afridi, F., (2011), “The Impact of School Meals on School Participation: Evidence from Rural India,” Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 46, No. 11, pp. 1636-56. Working Paper dated 2007.

Alderman, H., J. R. Behrman, V. Lavy, and R. Menon (1997), “Child Nutrition, Child Health, and School Enrolment: A Longitudinal Analysis,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 1700, Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Black, R. E., L. H. Allen, Z.A. Bhutta, L.E. Caulfield, M. de Onis, M. Ezzati, C. Mathers, and J. Rivera, (2008), “Maternal and child undernutrition: global and regional exposures and health consequences,” The Lancet, Vol. 371, No. 9608, pp. 243-260.

CUTS Centre for Consumer Action Research & Training (CART) (2006), Measuring Effectiveness of Mid Day Meal Scheme in Rajasthan: Participatory Expenditure Tracking Survey, Jaipur: CUTS CART.

Drèze, J. and A. Goyal (2003), “Future of Mid Day Meals,” Economics and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 44, pp. 4673-4683.

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), “Contribution of Nutrition to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” available at: <http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/nutrition/Contribution%20of%20Nutrition%20to%20Achieving%20the%20Millennium%20Deve.pdf>.

Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education and Literacy, Mid-Day Meal Division (2012), Minutes of the National Review Meeting with State/UT Secretaries/Nodal officers to review implementation of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, New Delhi, 28 July 2012.

Khera, R. (2006), “Mid-Day Meals in Primary Schools: Achievements and Challenges,” Economics and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 46, pp. 4742-4750.

Si, A.R. and N. K. Sharma (2008), “An Empirical Study of the Mid-Day Meal Programme in Khurda, Orissa,” Economics and Political Weekly, Vol.43, No. 25, pp. 46-55.

Singh, A., A. Park, and S. Dercon (2012), “School Meals as a Safety Net: An Evaluation of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme in India,” Working Paper No. 75, Young Lives, Oxford, UK: University of Oxford.

Svedberg, P., (2000), Poverty and Undernutrition: Theory, Measurement, and Policy, Indian Edition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Thorat, S. and J. Lee (2005), “Caste Discrimination and Food Security Programmes,” Economics and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 39, pp. 198-201.

1 Here, “productivity” refers not only to classroom participation in the short-run, but also longer-term productivity in adulthood.