From free noon meal to free breakfast in schools: TN shows the way

Providing free meals in schools is a century-old history with pandit Iyothee Thass, father of Tamil modernity, and Theosophist Henry Olcott launching it in the Panchama Schools in Chennai in the late 1890s. Chief Minister MK Stalin has launched the Free Breakfast Scheme in schools, first ever in the country, writes ETV Bharat's M C Rajan.

Chennai: In a major leap forward, the DMK government of MK Stalin has expanded the Noon Meal Scheme in Schools, adding Free Breakfast from Thursday. A significant post-pandemic state intervention, the programme was launched on the 114th birth anniversary of Dravidian stalwart and former Chief Minister C N Annadurai.

Stalin's decision to implement the scheme came after his recent inspection at a government school when he found students coming to school empty stomach. “During a visit to a school in Chennai, the students told me that they rarely had breakfast. When asked, officials too confirmed it. It was then I decided to implement the programme. For, no one should go to class with an empty stomach,” he said after inaugurating the scheme in a school in Madurai. Not only did he have breakfast with the children, but served and fed a couple of them.

For his admirers, Stalin, with the launch of this programme, has donned the role of iconic Congress leader and former Chief Minister K Kamaraj, who launched the Mid Day Meal Scheme in primary schools across the state in March 1956. To his credit, it was Kamaraj who turned education into a movement by starting schools in the nook and corner of Tamil Nadu, when his predecessor C Rajagopalachari refused to open more schools citing financial constraints and imposed the shift system, derided as casteist segregation by the DMK.

If Kamaraj was a visionary, AIADMK founder and former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran (MGR) expanded the scheme further to include high schools and rechristened it as the Nutritious Noon Meal Scheme in 1982. Though he was reviled by the opposition and financial pundits then, the programme had now been hailed as a significant one, in greatly enhancing enrollment and arresting the dropout ratio. Other states are emulating it now.

In his address, Stalin, tracing the more than a century-old history of providing free meals in schools, recalled that it was pandit Iyothee Thaas, the pioneering Buddhist scholar, who first conceived the idea of a noon meal programme in schools. Then, the Justice Party Mayor Pitti Theagaraya implemented it for the first time in 1922 in all the schools in Madras Corporation, he said, adding that it was temporarily halted by the British. It took Kamaraj to launch it in 1956.

Giving credit to all the former Chief Ministers, he said while MGR had increased the funding, his father Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa had made improvements to the Noon-Meal Scheme, by including eggs, bananas and a variety of rice.

How it all started is quite interesting. Iyothee Thaas was a trailblazer and father of Tamil modernity. He was closely associated with Col. Henry Steel Olcott of the Theosophical Society, who established the Panchama schools in 1894 for the education of the dalits. A total of five schools were started. In order to enhance enrollment, he started providing a small measure of raw rice to each student every month on the suggestion of Thass. Later, food was provided instead of rice.

According to the annual report of Theosophical society in 1904, the cost of food was Rs 6,553 for a total number of 2280 students. Olcott managed to sustain this through philanthropic support from his friends and associates in the US. While four schools have been handed over to the Madras Municipality, the remaining one still functions in Adyar.

While Manimekalai the protagonist in the Sangam era Buddhist epic 'Manimekalai', feeds the hungry with her Akshya Patra, modernist Tamil poet, Subramania Bharathi while commanding to feed every hungry ones, also fumes 'burn the whole world if even a single man goes empty stomach'. Thus, feeding the hungry continues to be reiterated as an ethical duty throughout the ages. And, the tradition continues.