On the map it is hard to locate Vadakethittai, a tiny village in Tamil Nadu of less than a thousand households. Accessing the village by foot means walking for two kilometres and negotiating a desolate landscape. When you get there, though, you realise that this isn’t an ordinary government school in rural India where you often find cows and goats wandering about the compound.
Here, however, classrooms have chairs, desks and blackboards. M Kamala, a school teacher, is full of pride for her students. There are as many girls as boys attending the school, some 200 students strong, she says. Most students in Vadakethittai continue up to Class 8 and enrollment has gone up by four times.
A stunning improvement in literacy has taken place in Tamil Nadu—especially in rural parts of the state. According to provisional figures released by the Directorate of Census operations, while the increase in the decadal literacy rate in Tamil Nadu as a whole was 6.68 per cent, the rural areas showed a remarkable rise of 7.59 per cent (while their urban counterparts logged an increase of 4.7 per cent.) Of the 1.19 crore increase in the number of literates over the past decade in the state, 44.3 lakh were in the rural areas and 74.6 lakh in the urban areas.
The leap in literacy is clearly attributed to a staple feature of life in Tamil Nadu—the mid-day meal scheme—targeting rural and urban children between the ages of five and fifteen. The menu is a nourishing combination of rice and sambhar (lentil) along with a egg and a weekly rotation of different vegetables. The sambhar is prepared using double fortified salt (DFS), a special kind that contains both iron and iodine, critical for mental and physical development. G Ramachandran, co-ordinator for AIM for Seva, a NGO which manages three schools at Manjakkudi, Sembangudi and Mudikondam in Tiruvarur district said that the scheme not only helped enrollment, but also retained students in the classrooms and increased their concentration levels.
Unit costs of mid-day meals in Tamil Nadu are not particularly high. Total cost per person is Rs 3.35, which includes cost of Rice at Rs 0.94 per day per beneficiary and cooking costs of Rs 1.50 per day per beneficiary. In 2010-2011, an expenditure of Rs 1,108 crore has been incurred under this scheme to benefit 54,80,340 students. For 2011-2012, Rs 1,246 crore has been allocated.
The mid-day meal scheme has a long history in TN. According to reports, the scheme was inspired when former Chief Minister and Congress leader Kamaraj was at a train intersection near the town of Cheranmahadevi in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. As he was waiting for a train to pass, he noticed young boys tending to their goats and cattle. He asked one small boy, “What are you doing with the cows? Why didn’t you go to school?” The boy immediately answered, “If I go to school, will you give me food to eat? I can learn only if I eat.” An idea was born.The scheme was officially launched by 1956 with the twin objectives of increasing enrolment and reducing the drop-out rate. It is believed to be the first such Government initiative anywhere in the world providing free lunch to schools.
While Kamraj conceptualised the scheme, MG Ramachandran(MGR), subsequent chief minister of the state, elevated it onto a statewide platform . The scheme was now targeted to all children in government schools in primary classes. Later the programme was expanded to cover all children up to class twelve and has been imitated by several other states in India.
In 1995, the then Union Finance Minister and present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hailed the success of the project and suggested that the scheme be implemented all over the country. Several other states of India also have had mid-day meal programmes.On November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court of India gave a landmark direction, which made it obligatory for the government to provide cooked meals to all children in all government and government assisted primary schools.
Now, the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK government is planning to launch a breakfast scheme in the schools, which would cost the ex-chequer around Rs 400-500 crore, according to sources. Sources said, the breakfast menu in Tamil Nadu may comprise milk, bun, rava uppuma, with some variations.
