TAMIL NADU-Noon Meals Scheme

Noon Meals Scheme Brindavan C Moses ON July 1. 1982, the Tamil Nadu government introduced a scheme for providing daily a nutritious free meal of 400-odd calories to lakhs of poor children in the age group 2 to 10. The scheme was formally named "The Chief Minister's Nutritious Noon-Meals Programme", On the day of its introduction, 55.96 lakh children were fed in 20,747 child welfare centres and 32,470 elementary schools. Though this programme, costing Rs 120 crore per year, has been widely publicised as the brainchild of MGR, it was Kama- raj, the late chief minister of Tamil Nadu, who had introduced the Midday Meals Scheme for school-children throughout the state in 1956 for the first time. MGR has only developed and extended that scheme.