About PM-Poshan Scheme | UPSC Current Affairs

Description

Copyright infringement not intended

In News:

The Union Ministry of Education has formed a Joint Review Mission to visit West Bengal to examine the performance of the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN).
The Joint Review Mission includes;
- Nutrition experts
- Officers from the Union Government
- Officers from the State Government.
The team will review the implementation of the scheme at the State, district and at school levels.
The Joint Review Mission to review:
- Fund transferred from State to Schools/implementing agencies.
- Coverage of the Scheme.
- Availability of Management Structure at the State, District, and Block level.
- The delivery mechanism of food grains from State to Schools.
- Creation of Capital Assets.
- Construction of Kitchen-cum-stores.
- Procurement/Replacement of Kitchen Devices.
- Involvement of NGOs/Trust/Centralized kitchens in the Scheme.
- The payment of the Cost of Food grains to the Food Corporation of India.
- The Management Information System (MIS).
- The implementation of an Automated Monitoring System

PM-Poshan Schemes:

The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme in India designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide, the Ministry of Education.
The programme supplies 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 million children in over 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, the Midday Meal Scheme is the largest of its kind in the world.
The Midday Meal Scheme has been implemented in the Union Territory of Puducherry under the French Administration since 1930.
In post-independent India, the Midday meal Scheme was first launched in Tamil Nadu, during the early 60s.
- Union Government initiated the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE) on 15 August 1995.
- By 2002, the scheme was implemented in all of the states under the orders of the Supreme Court of India.
The name of the scheme was changed to PM-POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) Scheme, in September 2021, by the Ministry of Education, which is the nodal ministry for the scheme.
- The Central Government also announced that an additional 24 lakh students receiving pre-primary education at government & government-aided schools would also be included under the scheme by 2022.
Key Features of PM-POSHAN Scheme;
- It will provide one hot cooked meal in Government and Government-aided schools from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
- This is a Centrally-Sponsored Scheme which covers all school children studying in Classes I-VIII in Government, Government-Aided Schools.
- The concept of Tithi Bhojan will be encouraged extensively. Tithi Bhojan is a community participation programme in which people provide special food to children on special occasions/festivals.
- Promoting Nutrition Gardens in schools to give children first-hand experience with nature and gardening. The harvest of these gardens is used in the scheme providing additional micronutrients.
- Social Audit of the scheme is made mandatory in all the districts.
- Special provision to provide supplementary nutrition items to children in aspirational districts and districts with a high prevalence of Anemia.
- A nutrition expert is to be appointed in each school to measure and suggest health aspects such as Body Mass Index (BMI), weight, haemoglobin levels, etc.
- The involvement of Farmers' Producer Organizations (FPO) and Women Self Help Groups in the implementation of the scheme will be encouraged.
- The use of locally grown traditional food items to support local economic growth will be encouraged.
- Government to switch to Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system to provide payment under the scheme.