Mid-Day Meal Scheme amidst COVID-19 in India - A Review Based Analysis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic posed a crisis like situation in the health and education sector devastating lives of many, particularly children from poor families and putting their future heath on the verge of deterioration. It made hard for today’s man to get a healthy meal a day in pandemic induced economic shutdown. Mid-Day Meal Scheme is also promising a kind of food security to the children for whom it is quite hard to get their daily meals in the crisis. It is really important to determine the drivers and stressors deteriorating health and nutritional conditions since the pandemic is on high. Keeping these in notice, the present study was conducted to have a holistic view of the current condition of the operationalization of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. It has been tried to know whether the current implementation of Mid-Day Meal Scheme is promising a healthy meal to the children since the operationalization has been changed in context of the COVID-19 scenario. Instead of hot cooked meal, food security allowances, and dry ration are supplied to the beneficiary children. The study was conducted to know that at how much level the beneficiaries actually receiving the benefits of the scheme currently. Some suggestions were also made at the end of the study to make the scheme more available and better in terms of its distribution of services to the beneficiary children.