In West Bengal’s Schools, the Mid-Day Meal Tells a Story of Hunger, Decline and Failure
Kolkata: In a school on Kolkata’s northern fringes, a child runs from room to room chasing the smell of food. In a primary school in North Bengal, lunch for 37 students is cooked with just 300 grams of lentils. In a school in Paschim Medinipur, classes and the mid-day meal are suspended because there is no teacher.
These vignettes point to a widening crisis in West Bengal’s school meal programme. Running under the national PM POSHAN scheme, the programme is marked by poor food, falling attendance, shrinking coverage, weak oversight, and a growing mismatch between official claims and what schools are actually delivering.
At Sodpur New Colony School in North 24 Parganas, on Kolkata’s outskirts, the problems are hard to miss. The school functions from a two-storey building built with local contributions and has several rooms, but only eight students are enrolled up to Class 5, and are taught by three teachers. One room is used for classes, another houses the state government’s ‘Ma Canteen’, and a third is being used as an Anganwadi kitchen.
A primary student runs between the rooms, drawn by the aroma of the food. He is brought back and seated on a classroom bench by the mid-day meal cook, who serves him hot rice and potato-soybean curry. He says he doesn't enjoy soybeans and instead asks for an egg. A teacher placates him with the promise of eggs in a few days.
The teacher Shirshendu Roy says the school staff can do little. “There is nothing we can do. The councillor has started two more separate kitchens in the school. We can only watch.”
The New Colony Primary School at Sodpur. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.
At Mostafapur Primary School in Gangarampur, North Bengal, the school building is orderly, the compound clean. But the meal served when The Wire visited in September 2025 itself raises questions. There are 34 students, three teachers, and two mid-day meal workers.
On the day this reporter visited, cook Nabami Das was preparing food for 37 people – the students, workers and one teacher – with three kilograms of rice, two kilograms of potatoes, two kilograms of pointed gourd, 250 grams of mustard oil and just 300 grams of masoor dal.
Nabami said, “The boys and girls who eat here all come from poor homes. They eat because of hunger. They love eggs and soybean when those are served. But eggs and soyabeans are given only once a week.”
The per-student cost guideline fixes the allocation at Rs 6.78 per child per day at the primary level and Rs 10.17 per child per day at the upper-primary level. Of this 60% is to be borne by the Union government and 40% by the state. Workers and observers say this is not enough to provide genuinely nutritious meals.
Farida Bibi, a worker from Olitola in Malda district, said, “We, who cook the mid-day meal, can understand that the food is no longer fit to be eaten. The students are like our own children. We feel pain seeing their faces. But often they are driven by hunger and they eat it anyway.” The Wire visited Olitola in June last year.
Mid-day meal workers have themselves been protesting for years. In West Bengal, workers associated with the scheme receive an allowance of Rs 2,000 a month. For years, they have been demanding 12 months’ payment instead of 10, a minimum wage of Rs 26,000, retirement benefits, pension, a one-time gratuity of Rs 5 lakh, festival allowance, and recognition as Group D employees, which will secure their jobs.
For many families, the school meal is a basic support. But across West Bengal, the scheme is increasingly shrinking along with government schooling itself.
Recent PM POSHAN records show that the decline is not marginal. In 2024–25, 1,13,44,146 students were enrolled under the scheme in West Bengal, but only 77,91,946, or about 69%, actually received meals. The Programme Approval Board recorded a fall of 4.01 lakh in enrolment between 2023–24 and 2024-25, along with a decline of 8.04 lakh in actual coverage, while the state’s proposed enrolment for 2025-26 fell by another 6 lakh. To put this in perspective, in 2010-11, total projected coverage stood at around 99 lakh.
Representative image of a cook serving midday meals to students. Photo: Flickr/ILO (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The scheme, launched nationally in 2001 and introduced in West Bengal in 2003, was meant to improve nutrition and keep children in school. In its earlier years, it did exactly that, especially for poor and marginal families. But the picture now emerging from schools, budget documents, audit reports and central reviews is one of erosion.
“One of the primary objectives of starting the mid-day meal scheme was to provide children with regular, full, nutritious meals. But now, when we hear this, it seems necessary to hold meetings with teachers and parents to find out the reasons,” said educationist Pabitra Sarkar.
In the 13th Joint Review Mission and the Programme Approval Board review for 2023-24, officials found major mismatches between state and district figures. The review flagged over-reporting of about 14.80 lakh children and 16 crore meals between April and September 2022, with an implied material-cost impact of over Rs 100 crore, following which the state’s requested central assistance for 2023-24 was cut by Rs 179.65 crore.
State budget documents show that actual expenditure was only Rs 515.04 crore in 2023-24, despite much higher allocations in later years, including Rs 2,299.30 crore in 2024-25 and Rs 1,673.12 crore in 2025-26. The 2026-27 interim budget then placed the revised estimate for 2025-26 at roughly Rs 305.28 crore, pointing to deep problems in fund utilisation and programme execution.
“The government’s inability to spend the money allocated for mid-day meals is disappointing. Mid-day meals do not only fill children’s stomachs; they also build a mindset against social divisions. Unfortunately, their importance is not being understood,” said Sabir Ahmed, a researcher associated with the non-governmental organisation Pratichi Trust.
In the halls of power, Bengal education minister Bratya Basu remains optimistic.
“In the field of education, Bengal is now among the leading states in the country. To strengthen that position further, the state has undertaken the ‘Expansion of School Education’ project,” he proclaimed.
For the children waiting for a weekly egg, the "leading state" exists only in budget reports, far from the reality of 300 grams of lentils stretched to feed 37 hungry mouths.
Translated from the Bengali original and with inputs by Aparna Bhattacharya.
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