TIRUCHY: With the expansion of the Chief Minister's Breakfast scheme to 31,000 government schools covering a total of 17 lakh students across Tamil Nadu, the century-old programme of providing meals to students at schools, launched by the Justice party, has evolved significantly to fulfil its purpose.
When the Justice Party launched the mid-day meal scheme in the 1920s, it was not for all schools but for select schools within the Chennai corporation. The scheme was aimed at increasing enrolment of students from disadvantaged communities.
Chief Minister M K Stalin, speaking at the function to expand the breakfast scheme in Thirukkuvalai on Friday, remembered the efforts of Justice Party leader Sir P T Thiyagarayar, also the then mayor of Chennai. Stalin recalled the contributions of former CMs K Kamaraj, M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran in expanding and developing the scheme.
Though the scheme has seen a full century now, the problems it addressed have never been the same. A Kalaiyarasan, author of the book 'The Dravidian Model', said, "When the Justice Party introduced the scheme, the purpose was to bring children from the depressed communities to schools. People of labour communities mostly preferred their children to work along with them instead of going to school. The purpose was the same when Kamarajar expanded the programme to all schools across the state.
They wanted to see more students from poor socio-economic backgrounds enrolling in schools. Later, during the times of M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran, the purpose changed. They aimed at addressing nutritional problems and arresting dropouts. Currently, both the breakfast and noon meal schemes will be addressing new challenges. One of them is that it will improve the academic performances of children from weaker sections."
P Jagadeesan, former VC of Bharathidasan University, said, "The mid-day meal was a boon for students from the Scheduled Castes and the Backward Communities. During the period of Kamaraj, it was implemented with local people's contributions. At that time, I was working as a teacher in Ariyalur government school. In fact, Kamaraj built on top of the idea of the Justice Party and expanded the scheme. Only decades later, the mid-day meal scheme was adopted by many other states."
Thanga Sivamurthy, headmaster of Panchayat Union Primary School at Manappathur in Ariyalur, said, "It will relieve women of the pressure of household chores in the morning. Many women have to go to farm or construction work early in the morning. My school has 102 total students. Of them, currently, around 90 take a mid-day meal. I can tell that more than 95 students will eat breakfast at school."