Rahul Gandhi, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, headed for Madhya Pradesh on Saturday with a broken heart.
Not because of what is in store in the Bihar Assembly election results, which will be declared six days from now, but the plight of children in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.
“I am heading to Madhya Pradesh today. And ever since I saw this news that children are being served mid-day meals in newspapers, my heart is broken,” Rahul wrote in Hindi on his X (formerly known as Twitter) handle. “These are the same innocent children on whose dreams the future of the country rests and they are not even getting a plate of dignity.”
Children from a school in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district were served mid-day meals on newspaper scraps. The living images of which were caught on camera and widely shared on social media.
Madhya Pradesh has been ruled by the BJP for almost two decades with a small interlude when the Congress’ under Kamal Nath had formed the government.
The footage, reportedly shot at a middle school in Hullpur village in Vijaypur block, shows students sitting on the bare compound floor with no overhead shelter, eating food served on torn paper sheets.
“More than 20 years of BJP government and they have even stolen the plates of children — their ‘development’ is just an illusion, the real secret to coming to power is ‘vyavastha’ (the system),” Rahul alleged.
An inquiry held under the orders of the District Collector of Sheopur Arpit Verma confirmed the veracity of the incident.
The contract of the self-help group responsible for supplying mid-day meals, now known as Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM Poshan) scheme, has been terminated. A show-cause notice has been served to the school’s principal.
The district administration has said corrective measures are being taken to ensure that such lapses do not recur.
In its 2023 manifesto, the BJP had promised to improve the quality of food served to the children. The scheme launched with the objective of providing nutritious meals to children and check dropout rates has often come under criticism.
This is not the first time the mid-day meal programme has come under fire. In July this year, The Telegraph Online reported a similar incident in Odisha where a video showed government schoolchildren being served boiled rice, watery curry, and a single boiled egg.
Under the guidelines, children in primary classes (1–5) are entitled to meals providing at least 450 calories and 12 grams of protein, while those in upper primary classes (6–8) should receive 700 calories and 20 grams of protein.
Congress MLA Sagar Charan Das from Kalahandi posted the video on X, writing, “It’s deeply disheartening to see that children in government schools in Odisha are being served nothing more than boiled rice and watery curry under the mid-day meal scheme. If we can’t ensure nutritious meals for them, how can we expect them to concentrate, learn, and thrive?”
While the PM Poshan scheme claims to cover over 95 per cent of children in government schools and anganwadi centres, researchers have raised doubts about data accuracy.
A 2024 commentary by Lindsay Jaacks (University of Edinburgh), Ananya Awasthi, and Apoorva Kalra (Anuvaad Solutions) highlighted major discrepancies between the government’s Poshan Tracker data and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019–21.
According to their analysis, the Poshan Tracker underreported underweight children by 13.7 percentage points and wasting (acute malnutrition) by 12.1 points compared with NFHS data.
On social media, the incident has been widely condemned and called out for the “deep-rooted corruption in welfare programmes.”
One user wrote, “Search mid-day meal scam & you'll find this is a national disgrace. Money for hungry children is being looted openly. I'm convinced 90% of the funds are embezzled. Top to bottom. No food. Not enough food. Or just rotten garbage served.”
Another commented, “Corruption, greed of politicians. Many times wall lizards are found in the meal. No punishment.”
A third post compared India’s situation to other countries: “Kids eating free school lunches in Japan, UK, France, Italy vs India — a $4 trillion economy.”
