The West Bengal government has announced that it will remove eggs from midday meals, sparking a debate over what children should be served in school.Opposition parties have accused the government of imposing vegetarianism. The ruling BJP, however, defended its proposal to partner with ISKCON for the revamped programme, calling it a “nutritional and hygiene-focused reform”.The decision has also prompted comparisons with Tamil Nadu — which, as Madras Presidency, pioneered the concept of midday meals in India and has provided eggs under its programme for decades now.The comparison, however, goes beyond eggs. Tamil Nadu’s midday meal programme has steadily evolved over the last century, with successive governments repeatedly revisiting what children should be fed, and why.Getting children into school…K Kamaraj, as chief minister of Madras State, is often credited with coming up with the idea for a school meal programme in 1956. But he was not the first. Kamaraj was building on decades of experiments within pre-independence Madras Presidency to get children into schools.The first publicly funded school meal experiment in Madras Presidency came in 1920 as part of an effort to expand compulsory elementary education.Officials recognised that poverty, hunger and families’ dependence on children’s earnings prevented many children from attending school regularly. They also realised that compulsory education could not be achieved through coercive tactics alone, according to a 2023 book by Catriona Ellis, a historian of modern South Asia.Story continues below this ad Justice Party president P Theagaraya Chetty. Wikimedia CommonsAgainst this backdrop, the Justice Party-led Madras Corporation turned to school meals as an incentive to attract and retain children in classrooms, says the book titled Imagining Childhood, Improving Children: The Emergence of an ‘Avuncular’ State in Late Colonial South India.By most accounts, party president P Theagaraya Chetty, who was also president of the Madras Corporation Council, recommended that a midday meal scheme be introduced to benefit the state’s impoverished children. At his behest, President A Subbarayalu Reddiar, the first chief minister of Madras Presidency, introduced such a scheme at the Cochrane Basin Corporation School in Madras city’s Thousand Lights area in 1920, according to Ellis and other sources.Chetty argued that the scheme would benefit the school’s 165 students, all from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, while encouraging parents to keep their children in school. The meals helped offset the loss of children’s earnings when they remained in school instead of working, with officials favouring such measures over punitive action for non-attendance.The daily cost per head was capped at one anna.Story continues below this adAlso Read | West Bengal’s children need eggs in their mid-day meal, not ideologyIn Imagining Childhood, Improving Children, Ellis notes that the scheme quickly proved its value. In 1926, Singaravelu Chetty, who would later become one of India’s pioneering Communist leaders, argued that the scheme should be expanded as schools serving meals recorded attendance of about 90%.Ellis also notes that attendance reportedly dropped by 50% when the scheme was briefly suspended in 1927. Even when faced with budget cuts, councillors defended the meals for children as “an incentive for them to go to school” and part of “advancing education, which is the primary duty of the Corporation”.By the end of the decade, the debate had moved beyond attendance.In 1930, the Madras Corporation declared: “If you cannot feed the body of a child, you cannot feed the brain.” School meals were increasingly seen as a core component of a broader vision linking nutrition, hygiene, medical inspection and child development.…and keeping them thereStory continues below this adAccording to Ellis, education authorities in Madras had begun to treat children’s health as central to their education by the 1930s. Corporation debates frequently dwelled on the nutritional value of school meals, the need to ensure a balanced diet, and the quality of food provided to children. Nutrition experts argued that bread and milk were superior to the usual rice-and-curd diet, while councillors also insisted that meals should reflect local food habits and religious sensibilities, says the book. Madras State chief minister K Kamaraj radically widened the midday meal experiment. Express archiveMedical inspection increasingly accompanied school meals, allowing authorities to monitor children’s health and reinforcing the idea that schools were responsible not only for education, but also for nutrition and physical development.This marked a wider shift in how the state viewed children. They were increasingly described as future citizens whose health and education justified public spending, writes Ellis.However, this political concern did not always translate into adequate funding. Ellis notes that a proposal to increase the midday meal budget from Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 was rejected on grounds of cost, even after councillors from both the Justice Party and the Congress claimed responsibility for children’s welfare.Story continues below this adAccording to Ellis, the programme was intended for poor children across communities but its beneficiaries were predominantly Dalit children, reflecting the poverty patterns of the time.Widening the experiment, and introducing eggsThe next major milestone came after Independence, when chief minister Kamaraj expanded the school meal programme in 1956 as part of his push for universal elementary education.The scheme was later transformed under chief minister M G Ramachandran’s Nutritious Meal Programme, which placed greater emphasis on children’s nutritional needs alongside improving school attendance.Also in Explained | Midday meal and supplementsIn January 1989, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi announced that children covered under the Nutritious Meal Programme would receive one boiled egg every two weeks. The accompanying government order laid out detailed procedures for procuring, inspecting and supplying eggs across the state. The addition of eggs built on the state’s long-standing effort to improve the nutritional quality of school meals.Story continues below this adSuccessive governments expanded both the frequency of egg distribution and the menu itself, adding bananas, fortified foods and other nutritional supplements. In 2013, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa introduced the Variety Meals scheme to expand the nutritional value and appeal of the midday meal programme.Today, eggs individually weighing at least 46 grams are served five days a week along with nutritious variety meals in Tamil Nadu. The state says that each egg supplies 6.12 g of protein and 80 kcal of energy.All-India effortsIn 1984, Kerala became the country’s second state to have a school lunch programme. Over the next few years, many other states launched their own versions of the scheme, and finally in 1995, the Centre stepped in. It was launched as a centrally sponsored scheme across 2,408 blocks for students up to Class 5, initially providing foodgrains to states.In 2001, following a landmark Supreme Court order, states were directed to provide cooked mid-day meals rather than dry rations. In 2007, the UPA government expanded the scheme to Class 8.Story continues below this adIn 2021, the scheme was renamed PM POSHAN. It’s among the largest initiatives in the world to enhance the nutrition levels of school-going children through hot cooked meals.