The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme of the Government of India conceived to improve the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide.
It was also envisaged to stop hunger from keeping children away from schools and to improve enrolment.
The programme provides free lunches on working days for children in primary and upper primary classes in government, government aided, local body, Education Guarantee Scheme, and alternate innovative education centres,Madarsa and Maqtabs supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and National Child Labour Project schools run by the ministry of labour.
Serving 120,000,000 children in over 1,265,000 schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, it is the largest such programme in the world.
