Main Article Content
Abstract
Mid Day Meal is the world’s largest school meal programme and reaches an estimated 12 crores children across 12 lakhs school in India. Mid Day Meal Scheme emerged out of the National Programme of Nutritional Support to primary education, a centrally sponsored scheme formulated in 1995 to improve enrollment, attendance and retention by providing free food grains to government primary schools. The main aim of MDM scheme is to reduce hunger, accelerate education in schools by providing cooked food to improve nutritional status among children, improve the enrollment level, and improve attendance level and retention rate in schools and in other educational centers. The cost of MDM scheme shared between the central and state government. The central government provides food grains to the state. The entire cost of cooking, infrastructure development, transportation of food grains, payment to cook and helpers is contributed by centre with the state government.Moreover, the central government provides greater share of funds. Whereas, the contribution of state government differ from state to state.Hence, in the present paper an attempt has been made to enlighten the aims, objectives and fund allocation towards MDM scheme.