SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 4 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which state initiated the implementation of the Mid-day Meal scheme in elementary schools?

(a)Uttar Pradesh
(b)Tamil Nadu
(c)Madhya Pradesh
(d)Karnataka

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Tamil Nadu is the state credited with starting school meals in India: the Madras Municipal Corporation began feeding schoolchildren in 1925, decades before any national programme existed.

K. Kamaraj carried it across the state's elementary schools as Chief Minister in the early 1960s, and M. G. Ramachandran turned it into the Nutritious Noon Meal Programme in 1982. The centrally sponsored scheme only reached the whole country in 1995 — so option (b), the state that went first.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Uttar Pradesh — The question asks who started it, not who runs it at scale today. Uttar Pradesh came to school meals through the centrally sponsored programme of 1995, not before it.
(c)
Madhya Pradesh — Madhya Pradesh implements the scheme like every other state, under the national programme. The initiative traces to the Madras Presidency, not to central India.
(d)
Karnataka — Karnataka is associated with the Akshaya Patra kitchens, which began serving Bengaluru schools in 2000 — a delivery model built on the scheme, long after Tamil Nadu started it.

Concept

This is a 'who did it first' question, and the answer is the Madras line, which runs unbroken from a municipal experiment in 1925 to a full state scheme in 1982 to a national programme in 1995.

The policy logic is worth holding, because SSC also asks it as a reasoning point. The meal was justified as much by attendance and retention — a reason to send a child to school and keep her there — as by nutrition. That is why it is served at school and not handed out as a home ration.

The national scheme has been renamed PM POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) since 2021, so a newer question may use that name for the same programme.

Key facts

The Madras Municipal Corporation began a mid-day meal for schoolchildren in 1925.
Tamil Nadu launched its Nutritious Noon Meal Programme in 1982 under Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran.
The centrally sponsored National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education began in 1995.
It was renamed PM POSHAN, Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman, in 2021.

Study next

The mid-day meal scheme from NP-NSPE in 1995 to PM POSHAN in 2021The Supreme Court's 2001 order in the right-to-food case that made cooked mid-day meals mandatoryCentrally sponsored schemes in school education: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Samagra Shiksha

Common traps

Answering with the state that has the most beneficiaries today rather than the one that began the programme.
Dating the scheme to 1995, which is when the centre took it national, not when it started.

SSC asks schemes by their firsts, their launch years and their current names. This shift tests the same body-and-year pattern at General Awareness Q.25, on the year the CSO adopted Gross Value Added.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.