What is the midday meal programms ?Can you list three benefits of the ptogramme?How do you think this programme help to promote greater equality?
Solution:
- The midday meal programme: The Mid-day Meal Scheme is the popular name for school meal programme in India which started in the 1960s. It involves provision of lunch free of cost to school-children on all working days.
- Three benefits of the programme: More poor children have begun enrolling and regularly attending school. Teachers reported that earlier children would often go home for lunch and then not return to school but now with the midday meal being provided in school, their attendance has improved. Their mothers, who earlier had to interrupt their work to feed their children at home during the day, now no longer need to do so. This programme has also helped reduce caste prejudices because both lower and upper caste children in the school eat this meal together, and in quite a few places, Dalit women have been employed to cook the meal. The midday meal programme also helps reduce the hunger of poor students who often come to school and cannot concentrate because their stomachs are empty.
- Promotion of gender equality : This scheme treats all the students, rich or poor alike.