Why in news?
Recently, Central Government has launched PM Poshan Shakti Nirman scheme for providing one hot cooked meal in Government and Government-aided schools from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
- The existing Mid-Day Meal scheme is renamed as the National Scheme for PM Poshan Shakti Nirman.
What is it?
Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN)-
Objective: To ensure holistic nutrition for students of Government and Governmentaided schools across India. Under Mid-Day Meal scheme, the focus was on providing a meal to students. Now under PM Poshan, focus is to ensure the proper nutrition. PM Poshan will tackle malnutrition.
Key component of the scheme–
PM Poshan is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme. It will cover 11.8 crore Children enrolled in 11.20 lakh schools across the country. All the students of classes I to VIII in government and government-aided schools are eligible under the scheme.
Fund share: A total budget of over Rs 1.3 lakh crore has been allocated for the continuation of the scheme for five years (from 2021-22 to 2025-26). The central government will contribute Rs 54061.73 crore. And the state governments and union territories will share Rs 31,733.17 crore. The centre will release additional Rs 45,000 crore on food grains.
School Nutritional Gardens: Under the scheme efforts will made to promote development of Nutritional Gardens in schools. It will connect children with nature and gardening. Even the produce from gardens will be used to deliver additional micro-nutrients to students.
Tithi Bhojan: This concept will be encouraged extensively. Tithi Bhojan is a community participation programme in which people provide special food to children on special occasions/festivals.
Social Audit: Social Audit will be mandatory in all districts to look after and check implementation of the scheme. Social audit is collective monitoring of a scheme by active people participation to cover issues like equality and expenditure management. It would engage college and university students to monitor the scheme at a local level.
Vocal for Local: Locally grown food items like vegetables, millets, condiments etc will be used to provide nutritional food. This will promote nutrition through local grown traditional food items and can enhance local economic growth.
- PM POSHAN will involve Farmers Producer Organizations (FPO) and Women Self Help Groups in implementation of the scheme.
- District Collector/ District Magistrate can be empowered by States/U.Ts to decide the menu suitable to local conditions within prescribed nutrition and food norms and to procure locally grown food items from FPO, SHGs. It will promote local employment generation
Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT): To promote transparency and reduce leakages, central government will ensure direct benefit cash transfers from states to individual school account which will cover cooking costs.
Supplementary Nutrition: PM POSHAN scheme has a provision for supplementary nutrition for children in aspirational districts and those with high prevalence of anaemia.
Balvatika: The scheme will extend the midday meal to children of pre-primary or Balvatikas running in government and government aided primary schools. Balvatika is the pre-school that was opened in government schools last year by the government to include pre-school aged children in the formal education system.
Challenges-
- Leakages: The scheme can face leakages similar to the Public Distribution System.
- Hunger level: India’s rank in Global Hunger Index 2021 is 101 as compared to the previous year 2020 rank 94. India has a level of hunger that is ‘serious’, with a score of 27.5.
- Discrimination: Caste-based discrimination reported in many schools in the serving of food.
Mid-Day Meal Scheme-
- It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme and this scheme was launched in 1995.
- The target of this scheme is to provide hot-cooked meal to children aged between 6 years to 14 years.