Tamil Nadu Timeline

WelfareNational and Dravidian movements

Madras Corporation starts a school meal scheme

· Thousand Lights

At a corporation school in Thousand Lights, the Madras Corporation started a breakfast scheme that foreshadowed Tamil Nadu's noon meal programmes.

With the legislative council's approval, the Madras Corporation launched a mid-day meal scheme in 1920. It started by serving breakfast at one corporation school in Thousand Lights, Madras, and was afterwards extended to four further schools. Historians see it as a forerunner of the free noon meal programmes that K. Kamaraj brought in during the 1960s and that M. G. Ramachandran widened in the 1980s.

Related events

  1. 1920

    1. 1920ChennaiEducation

      Madras Elementary Education Act

      A Madras statute made elementary schooling compulsory for both boys and girls and raised spending on primary schools.

  2. 1931

    1. 1931AdyarSocial Reform

      Muthulakshmi Reddy starts Avvai Home

      Muthulakshmi Reddy founded the Avvai Home in Madras to shelter and educate orphaned and destitute girls.

  3. 1956

    1. 1956 to 1963ChennaiWelfare

      Kamaraj expands free schooling and midday meals

      The Kamaraj government opened thousands of schools, extended free education and expanded free midday meals for schoolchildren.

  4. 1982

    1. 1 Jul 1982ChennaiWelfare

      Nutritious Noon Meal Scheme launched

      MGR's government expanded the school midday meal into a universal Nutritious Noon Meal Scheme for children across Tamil Nadu.

  5. 1989

    1. 1989ChennaiWelfare

      Eggs added to the noon meal

      Karunanidhi announced an egg once every two weeks with the noon meal, the first step towards eggs on every school day by 2010.

  6. 2022

    1. 15 Sep 2022MaduraiWelfare

      Chief Minister's Breakfast Scheme launched

      Free breakfast for children in government primary schools began in Madurai and was later extended to all government primary schools.

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