PM POSHAN Scheme

Context

The Indian government has announced it will bear an additional cost of Rs 425.62 crore in FY 2024-25 due to inflation in food material costs under the PM POSHAN Scheme, which provides hot cooked meals to school children.

About PM POSHAN Scheme

Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN)earlier known as the National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools is one of the foremost rights based Centrally Sponsored Schemes under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA).
The Scheme aims at providing nutritional support and enhancing school participation of students.
This scheme serves hot meals to 11.70 crore students in 10.24 lakh government and government-aided schools. The students are from Balvatika (pre-primary) to class VIII.
Under the PM POSHAN Scheme, ‘Material Cost’ is provided for procurement of following ingredients required for cooking the meals :

Ingredients	Per student per meal quantity
Ingredients	Bal Vatika & Primary	Upper Primary
Pulses	20 gm	30 gm
Vegetables	50 gm	75 gm
Oil	5 gm	7.5 gm
Spices & Condiments	As per need	As per need
Fuel	As per need	As per need

The Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour provides data on inflation for these items under the PM POSHAN basket on the basis of Consumer Price Index – Rural Labourers (CPI-RL) in consonance with CPI index for PM POSHAN and accordingly CPI index for PM POSHAN basket has been worked out.
The CPI-RL is constructed by Labour Bureau, Chandigarh on the basis of collecting continuous monthly prices from the sample of 600 villages spread over 20 States of the country.