Introduction
In traditional policy studies, social protection (SP) recipients were portrayed as passive ‘beneficiaries’ in need of assistance (Müller-Funk et al., Reference Müller-Funk, Üstübici and Belloni2023) with limited aspirations (Flechtner, Reference Flechtner2017). Recent scholarship critiques the persistent exclusion of those most impacted by policies from participating in their co-design, highlighting the need to recognise and integrate diverse lived experiences and perceptions into policymaking and evaluation (Rahman & Pingali, Reference Rahman and Pingali2024; Roy, Reference Roy2021; Speed & Reeves, Reference Speed and Reeves2025). Scholars further argue that SP should move beyond basic safety nets to support life-planning and long-term wellbeing (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2003), and beyond linear framings of social policy by attending to the complexities, interdependence and dynamic interactions between multiple actors, institutions, structures and norms (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Noone and Salignac2024; Caffrey & Munro, Reference Caffrey and Munro2017). Together, these critiques call for greater attention to how SP programmes are experienced by those they are designed to support.
School meal programmes occupy a central position within SP systems for children and, by extension, their families. Situated at the intersection of health, nutrition and education, they provide a valuable setting for examining how SP objectives are experienced, interpreted and mediated in everyday life. Extant work on school meals highlights their role in improving cognitive performance and classroom behaviour, easing pressures on household food economies and shaping long-term livelihood trajectories (O’Connell et al., Reference O’Connell, Brannen, Ramos, Skuland and Truninger2022). Experts have questioned their cost-effectiveness compared to targeted interventions such as direct nutritional supplementation and noted difficulties in isolating their specific impacts (Alderman & Bundy, Reference Alderman and Bundy2012). Yet these debates focus largely on programme outcomes, offering less insight into how school meals are understood and negotiated within households.
To address this gap, we examine how socio-economically marginalised families perceive India’s Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDMS), a well-known SP programme targeting children’s nutritional and educational outcomes, situating these perceptions within broader socio-cultural contexts. While existing research has explored the nutritional and socio-psychological implications of state-provided meals for children, it offers less insight into the household contexts through which such programmes are interpreted and experienced. School meals do not operate independently of familial aspirations but are entangled with them, particularly as schools are not only centres of education but also crucial sites where identities and aspirations are created, differentiated and contested (Thapan, Reference Thapan2023). Similarly, food decisions in India are deeply embedded within households and shaped by intersecting norms of caste, class and religion. Perceptions of school meals therefore cannot be understood in isolation from these norms and identities. We apply aspirations as a conceptual lens because it captures how they shape the goals families pursue and the trade-offs they navigate. Rather than treating marginalised families as simply constrained in their capacity to aspire (Appadurai, Reference Appadurai2007), we attend to the active processes of negotiation and deliberation through which they balance immediate survival needs with longer-term goals. We situate perception of the MDMS within this dynamic, bringing into focus how the scheme is embedded in broader decisions about children’s schooling, time and labour, and in understandings of school meals as a form of SP.
School meal challenges and prospects in India
During the mid-1990s, Indian children – particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds – faced several educational and health challenges, with the country having some of the world’s lowest scores on common indicators of child wellbeing (Khera, Reference Khera2006). These included low enrolment, high dropout and low primary school completion (Afridi, Reference Afridi2011), alongside health issues such as inadequate food intake, micronutrient deficiencies and hunger. Evidence shows strong links between food and nutrition insecurity and children’s cognitive function and school performance, highlighting the importance of addressing nutritional needs to improve educational outcomes (Fledderjohann et al., Reference Fledderjohann, Patterson and Owino2023). The interconnection between education and health has led to both standalone policies and integrated programmes, such as the MDMS, which targets both outcomes simultaneously.Footnote 1
The MDMS seeks to address child hunger and malnutrition through free cooked meals while also reducing barriers to education by lowering the opportunity costs of schooling (Afridi, Reference Afridi2005). At its inception, the scheme mandated one cooked meal for children in government- and government-aided primary schools (Paltasingh & Bhue, Reference Paltasingh and Bhue2022). While some states provided cooked meals, most distributed dry rations and snacks. Following a 2001 Supreme Court directive and civil society advocacy, cooked meals were widely introduced in government primary schools, providing a minimum of 300 calories and 8–12 grams of protein. The scheme was extended to the upper primary students (grades VI to VIII; ages 11–14) in 2008–2009. Currently, eligibility is restricted to students in classes I-VIII (aged ∼6–14 years) attending government, government-aided and local body schools, while those in classes IX-X in government schools, as well as children in private schools, remain ineligible. The MDMS is jointly financed by central and state governments and implemented through state and local bodies, resulting in regional variations influenced by local culture, politics and funding (Kaur, Reference Kaur2021). Reaching approximately 118 million students in 1.12 million schools (Press Information Bureau, 2022), it is widely regarded as one of India’s more successful food security programmes, notable for its regularity, coverage and cost-effectiveness per child, though it has also faced criticism for food quality and uneven implementation (Afridi et al., Reference Afridi, Barooah and Somanathan2020).
Early studies linked the MDMS to improved primary school enrolment, particularly among girls, for whom schooling costs pose greater barriers to participation (Drèze & Kingdon, Reference Drèze and Kingdon2001; Kaur, Reference Kaur2021). While the scheme has been shown to improve children’s immediate nutritional intake, its longer-term nutritional impacts remain under-researched (Afridi, Reference Afridi2011; Singh et al., Reference Singh, Park and Dercon2014). Evidence suggests stronger benefit in tribal areas marked by chronic malnourishment amongst school-going girls, and in food-insecure households (Dreze & Goyal, Reference Dreze and Goyal2003). Disadvantaged groups, including Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) – official administrative categories used in India to denote historically marginalised communities – have shown the largest enrolment gains (Kaur, Reference Kaur2021). It has also been valued for relieving working mothers in low-income households of the responsibility of feeding children during the day (Khera, Reference Khera2006). Finally, while the MDMS may reduce social inequalities by enabling children from diverse backgrounds to share meals, its integrative effects remain constrained by caste, school and neighbourhood dynamics (Samal & Dehury, Reference Samal and Dehury2017; Thorat & Lee, Reference Thorat and Lee2005).
Research focus
The MDMS was designed to promote universal access to primary education and support socio-economically marginalised families, yet how families understand and engage with the scheme today remains underexplored. Over three decades, educational priorities and aspirations have evolved significantly, yet the scheme’s framing has largely remained unchanged. Most qualitative studies adopt a school-centred view, drawing primarily on the perspectives of children, teachers and school management within formal settings. Since aspirations and educational priorities are shaped within households and vary across social identities and positions, this paper examines how diversely situated families perceive and negotiate the scheme, and how its fundamental goals are understood and interpreted in current times.
Methods
This paper draws on data from a broader research project examining household-level food choices and food insecurity. Our field team [SM, AR, CV] conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews in Hindi with multiple adult and child members of eighty-six households in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Goa between December 2022 and March 2023. Given the broader focus on diverse intra-household experiences of food insecurity, low-income households with school-age children (aged 7–17 years) were purposively sampled. Within this sample, we aimed to maximise diversity across caste, religion and household structure (e.g. nuclear, single-parent and multi-generational households), as well as livelihood profiles. While data from all eighty-six households informed the broader analysis, this paper draws on a detailed narrative analysis of sixty households (246 participants; 134 adults, 112 children), selected to ensure analytical depth and maximum variation across social positions, livelihood contexts and household relationships with the MDMS. Participating families included those whose children were currently accessing meals in government schools, those who had done so in the past, those who combined school and home meals or accessed the scheme only occasionally and those whose children attended government schools but did not consume the meals. Several participating households had multiple children across different grades or school types, meaning some children fell within the scheme’s eligibility while siblings did not – because they were either enrolled above Class VIII or attending private schools. Some families had moved all their children to private schooling, bringing prior but no current experience with MDMS, while others never had children in government schools. Because questions on the MDMS were asked of all participants regardless of current access, responses drew on direct experience, recent or past engagement, and perceptions formed through social interactions. During preliminary analysis, it became evident that restricting the sample to current users would limit understanding of how the scheme is interpreted and negotiated within households.
UP and Goa were selected based on the co-investigator’s (SV) local expertise and the feasibility of access. UP, India’s most populous state, offered a socio-demographically diverse context characterised by socioeconomic disadvantage and developmental challenges across rural and urban areas, with participants primarily engaged in farming and informal work such as construction, painting, driving and daily wage work. Goa, India’s smallest state and widely associated with a tourism-driven economy, was selected to examine the experiences of low-income inter-state migrant communities engaged largely in informal work such as domestic work, driving, cooking, tailoring and security services. In UP, initial contact with households was facilitated by existing local contacts, who helped identify families that met the sampling criteria. In Goa, initial entry to the field site was facilitated by local contacts, but households were identified through random walks in prioritised neighbourhoods, with the field team approaching participants directly. Within each household, interviews were conducted with as many adult and child members as possible, irrespective of the children’s school type. This process inevitably shaped the sample, as participation depended on accessibility and willingness, potentially excluding the least reachable households.
We collected data using household rosters, semi-structured interview guides, and field notes. One adult household member completed the roster, self-reporting sociodemographic information for all household members, including caste, religion, age, gender, education, occupation and school enrolment. We updated this information during subsequent interviews, wherever needed. The PI (JF) developed age-appropriate, semi-structured interview guides for three groups: children aged 7–12, children aged 13–17 and adults, refining these through discussions with the Co-I, stakeholders and field team, and revising them following pilot interviews with eight families in UP. The semi-structured design allowed contextual adaptation, with interviewers prioritising key themes and shortening or omitting lower-priority questions where participants faced time constraints. The field team maintained detailed notes documenting contextual observations, household dynamics, environmental conditions and non-verbal cues. Interviews were conducted across domestic and neighbourhood settings, sometimes with limited privacy. While this introduced interruptions, it also offered insight into the social contexts within which participants’ accounts were produced. The field team and a professional transcriptionist translated and transcribed data into English, retaining exact wording alongside audio cues such as pauses and trailing sentences.
While themes such as food choice, consumption and intra-household distribution overlapped across groups, children’s interviews used age-appropriate language and interactive methods, including drawing activities and vignette-based storytelling. Guides for younger children were shorter and focused primarily on preferences, daily routines and school experiences, while interviews with adolescents covered a broader range of topics and included additional probing depending on their roles and responsibilities within the household. Adult interviews explored livelihoods, income fluctuations, migration, household decision-making and welfare engagement in greater depth.
Ethical practice was treated as an ongoing, reflexive process, prioritising participants’ well-being, navigating power asymmetries, and remaining sensitive to participants’ comfort. Given the sensitive nature of discussions around poverty, food insecurity and shame, we approached these topics carefully, introducing difficult questions conversationally and embedding them within broader discussions. We reassured participants of anonymisation throughout and maintained privacy wherever possible. We reminded participants that they could withdraw, decline to answer, redirect the conversation or move to a more comfortable setting at any point, and paused or redirected interviews where participants appeared uncomfortable, whether through verbal cues or changes in gesture and demeanour. We explained our study to adult participants orally, obtained consent for participation and recording, and provided them with an information sheet. We took particular care with child participants, obtaining assent in addition to parental consent. While there were no disclosures of child maltreatment, we informed all participants that we would only breach confidentiality in such cases, which must be reported to appropriate authorities. Ethical approval was provided by the Institutional Ethics Committee at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India (IITK/IEC/2022-23/I/19) on 09/09/2022 and the Faculty Ethics Review Committee at Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK (FASSLUMS-2022-0953-RECR-3) on 10/11/2022.
Analysis
SM led coding and analysis, working closely with co-authors on iterative revisions to codes and themes. We combined deductive and inductive approaches, drawing initially on pre-existing thematic interests, while revising codes to be responsive to participants’ narratives and situated contexts. Initial codes were developed from the research questions, early readings and insights from field engagement, and were refined through recursive engagement with transcripts as new codes and sub-themes emerged inductively. Coding was conducted manually and in NVivo.
To guide our analysis, we adopted a systems approach (Brown et al., Reference Brown, Noone and Salignac2024; Caffrey & Munro, Reference Caffrey and Munro2017), which emphasises tracing interconnections across different dimensions of a complex social issue and examining how they interact. This approach enabled us to analyse perceptions of school meals within the broader interplay of household dynamics, livelihood constraints and social identities. Within this framing, we applied narrative analysis to the transcripts, drawing on Riessman’s (Reference Riessman2008) understanding of narratives as interpretive devices through which individuals make sense of their experiences. Rather than examining accounts of the MDMS in isolation, we situated them within participants’ wider narratives of food and everyday life to understand how broader social contexts shaped perceptions of school meals. Through this process, aspirations emerged as a recurring analytical lens through which participants interpreted everyday food practices and articulated future possibilities.
We draw on Prakash’s (Reference Prakash2021) framework, which views aspirations not as individual preferences but as socially produced and negotiated orientations towards desirable futures. This framework has three analytically useful dimensions. First, aspirations are structured: shaped by social positions, including caste, class, gender and religion, which influence what futures appear legitimate or attainable. Second, they are situated: formed in relation to proximate social worlds; the people one lives with, looks up to or seeks to distinguish oneself from. Third, they are contested: subject to ongoing negotiation through social norms, power dynamics and shifting identities. This lens is particularly useful for analysing the MDMS because it operates at the intersection of food and education: two domains closely tied to aspirations in contemporary India. Consequently, what appears aspirational for one household may function as a marker of stigma or social dissociation for another. For instance, dependence on non-normative food support (e.g. charity) can undermine performances of normative family responsibility, generating profound shame for some families (O’Connell & Brannen, Reference O’Connell and Brannen2021). Caste, an ascribed hierarchical identity, adds further complexity as ideas of purity and pollution continue to shape participation in shared food spaces and educational institutions (Kikon, Reference Kikon2022). Examining the MDMS through aspirations therefore draws attention to not only how families perceive the scheme, but also to how these perceptions are shaped by social identities, lived experiences and imagined futures.
Results
While the MDMS functioned as a vital safety net for a small subset of families facing acute precarity, most participants perceived its value as insufficiently aligned with their broader needs and aspirations. Engagement was shaped by complex trade-offs between food and education, immediate survival and longer-term goals, and individual entitlement and household-level wellbeing. Aspirations, in this context, were not confined to future-oriented goals but encompassed everyday struggles for dignity and subsistence. Across participants, three intersecting dynamics shaped how the MDMS was perceived and negotiated: educational aspirations and school choice, cultural meanings of food and the competing demands of precarious household life.
Educational aspirations override nutritional concerns
Families frequently evaluated the MDMS not as a food programme but through its relationship to educational mobility. For most families, food security and educational opportunity were both pressing concerns, yet perceived educational quality consistently took precedence when the two came into tension. This prioritisation often resulted in families forgoing state-provided school meals in favour of private schooling.Footnote 2 Across sociodemographic groups, private schooling was widely believed to be associated with better educational outcomes – even if sometimes only marginally so. This belief was driven by perceptions of English-medium instruction, greater accountability, and higher aspirational value. Government schools, by contrast, were often assumed to be a default choice constrained by affordability rather than preference. In the rare instances where families spoke favourably of government schools on educational grounds, it was the perceived quality of the school itself, rather than the MDMS, that informed their preference.
For some families, even modest perceived advantages of low-cost private schools justified additional costs and the loss of access to school meals. Notably, some families who had never accessed the MDMS pre-emptively dismissed it as inconsequential to their schooling decisions. Such families were aware of its benefits and its exclusivity to government schools but unwilling to let it anchor their choices. They consciously forewent the meals by opting out of government schooling in favour of what they viewed as better educational opportunities. One participant (father, forty-six, two children in government school) asked, ‘Do you think I send my child to the school to eat food or to study? What is important for our children, good quality education or free school food?’ Other families, who had previously utilised government schooling, likewise deprioritised the nutritional benefits of the MDMS in favour of securing what they perceive to be superior educational environments.
Families drawn to the perceived advantages of private schooling not only relinquished the supplementary food and free education in government schools, but also actively undertook the financial and physical burdens of this choice. They absorbed additional costs for fees, transportation, books and uniforms, while also setting aside money for children’s lunch expenses. Families had to work harder (sometimes in physically demanding and stigmatising paid employment) and invest extra effort into food preparation to cover the added expenses. One participant (father, forty-two, three children across government and private schools) mentioned that, despite adversities, he and his wife could manage food-related expenses but found it difficult to cover rising costs for private schooling. Both he and his wife described the decision to send their children to a private school as unavoidable ‘in today’s time’, gesturing to intensifying competition for stable employment.
Food became the domain where sacrifices were most visibly made. In another instance, a participant (mother, thirty-two, three children in private schools) described how their family did not mind eating ‘just any type of available food’, explaining, ‘stomach has to be full, that we can manage somehow’. In many cases, children (1) brought lunch from home, requiring mothers to wake up early to prepare it, or (2) did not eat until after school, creating significant gaps between meals. Food compromises, such as forgoing nutritious food or substituting culturally preferred food with less desirable low-cost alternatives, became routine practices in household budget management. During challenging times, some parents chose food like ‘namak-roti’ (salt and bread) or ‘chawal-chutney’ (rice and condiment) at home and sent biscuits or chips with children for school. These food choices provide limited nutritional value.
Among families who enrolled children in government schools, the MDMS was rarely the motivating factor. For many, the choice reflected economic constraints rather than preference. In one rural household in UP, the grandfather (sixty) enrolled his grandson (ten) in a government school but expressed significant scepticism about its quality, dismissing the meals as inconsequential to his broader educational concerns. While the grandson viewed the meals positively, the grandfather regarded the immediate benefits of the MDMS as secondary to his larger aspirations for the child’s future – goals he believed his grandson was too young to fully comprehend. He shared, ‘Yes he gets food once in the afternoon, sometimes only vegetables, once…that’s it…there is no study…no discipline’. His account points to how schools are evaluated not only on academic grounds but on their capacity to instil valued social behaviours and life skills, with the MDMS offering little weight in this assessment.
In the few cases where parents actively preferred a government school on educational grounds, the MDMS meals were seen as incidental, rather than a standalone incentive for enrolment. For example, in an urban UP household, a participant (father, thirty-seven, one child in government) who was dissatisfied with the nearby private school planned to enrol his son in a ‘reputed’ government school. Initially hesitant due to travel costs, he later opted for a hired van service. When asked about free lunch at the government school, he dismissed it, stating food was never a problem in their household. He explained that his son (nine) would carry lunch, like him, as he felt his child wouldn’t like the school food. He further shared, ‘The school food could help some families, but we are fine’. Although he valued the government school, he simultaneously distanced his household from those perceived to depend on school meals.
Cultural meanings of food shape MDMS utilisation
The uptake and perception of the MDMS were deeply entangled with cultural meanings of food and the symbolic politics of provisioning. For many families, sharing views about the MDMS was not merely a question of nutrition or need, but an interpretative process shaped by their efforts to assert, negotiate and obscure specific facets of their social identities. These processes manifested across four intersecting domains.
Relying on MDMS meals compromises gendered parenting expectations
Food provisioning practices, rooted in gendered parenting norms, influenced how parents perceived the MDMS. For many parents, the scheme came into tension with normative ideals of parental responsibility, whereby an inability to provide food for one’s children became a source of stigma and shame. Fathers, culturally positioned as household providers and central to ensuring children’s sustenance and protection, often downplayed the importance of the MDMS meals or distanced themselves from it, even when children indicated otherwise. For example, when a child (male, fourteen) mentioned food-related difficulties at home and the value of school meals, his father (thirty-eight) firmly denied any hardship. He responded, ‘No, no problem. If they eat food [at home], why will it be a problem? It is a daily thing. Even animals get to eat daily’. The disjuncture between parental accounts and children’s experiences was striking. In another household, a father (forty) similarly insisted his family faced no food-related difficulties, while his son (eleven) contradicted this directly, sharing ‘padhai chod di thi, dikat aagayi thi’ (I had to stop studying because difficulties arose at home). He added, ‘There was no food to eat at home. My father did not have work, so my mother stopped my school’.
Mothers, positioned as carers, similarly navigated tension between the scheme’s practical utility and the normative expectation of preparing fresh, home-cooked food for children. Despite recognising the scheme’s potential to ease their burden, many continued preparing tiffinsFootnote 3 either because children were hesitant to eat school food or felt happier carrying home-cooked food. The scheme’s uneven eligibility further limited its practical value. Where one child qualified – for instance, a child in Class VII – but a sibling in Class IX did not, mothers still needed to cook for the older child, making it simpler to prepare food for all children rather than partially rely on the MDMS.
Food socialisation informs children’s engagement with the MDMS meals
Through everyday family routines, children internalised norms around receiving, sharing and refusing food. This shaped their comfort with practices such as queuing for food, requesting additional portions, or eating from shared plates. For some, queuing for meals felt natural; others found it stigmatising.
In one urban UP household, children (daughters aged fourteen and sixteen) avoided school meals even when they couldn’t bring a tiffin. Their mother (thirty-eight), a domestic worker, rushing to work each morning, wished they would eat the school meals to reduce her burden. The children, however, felt ashamed to queue for food. She recalled having discouraged them from accepting free food at temples and community gatherings when they were young, making the parallel of lining up for school meals a humiliating and uncomfortable experience. Further, children’s willingness to request second helpings varied, shaped both by early food socialisation and the school environment. This variation is particularly significant given that children across both states consistently reported smaller portions of food, making a second serving not an indulgence but a necessity. For example, a boy (ten) in rural UP shared how he liked the food, but though he preferred eating slowly, he felt pressured to eat quickly to secure a second helping. In another instance, a girl (twelve) in urban UP described the limited meal portions at school, stating, ‘ek chamach dete hain’, (they give one serving spoon of food). When asked if students could request more, she responded, ‘No. If food is left, then only they will give again. They will repeat if food is leftover’. In some schools, principals actively encouraged additional servings, recognising that many children from labouring households would otherwise have little to eat until their parents returned from work. In others, restraint prevailed, with children hesitating to ask or feeling discouraged from doing so.
Monthly registration for the scheme also induced discomfort for some children, particularly those enrolling for the first time or returning after a gap. As one child (thirteen) noted, ‘Although I sometimes wanted to eat the food, I felt awkward suddenly adding my name to the list’. Such moments induced feelings of shame in some children. Feelings of embarrassment sometimes discouraged participation despite interest in the meals.
Caste and class shape engagement with the MDMS meals
Perceptions of the MDMS reflected broader distinctions in how families understood SP. Support associated with educational achievement or social mobility was often viewed positively, whereas assistance with everyday food provision occupied a more ambiguous social position. As one participant (mother, fifty, daughter in government school) remarked, ‘If my daughter gets a scholarship, I can happily tell others. For this food can I be happy? Even people who have to eat this food because of their situation, can they happily talk about this?’ Her comment highlights how different forms of SP carry different social meanings. While scholarships and educational assistance could be incorporated into narratives of merit, achievement and mobility, reliance on school meals was more likely to be associated with dependency and lower social status. Another upper-caste participant (father, thirty-three, one child in a government school) expressed a preference for government schooling but stated firmly that his son was unlikely to consume MDMS meals. By distinguishing his household from those he perceived to be in greater need of ‘such assistance’, he reinforced a relatively privileged caste and class position and implied that reliance on government-provided food for children was a marker of lower social status.
While the MDMS aims to foster social solidarity and address caste-based exclusion, participants’ accounts did not always lead to clear assessments of inclusion or discrimination. Although children frequently described eating together, recurring references to caste norms around food, touch and social interaction pointed to more subtle forms of boundary-making. Mothers often instructed children which foods to avoid and with whom they could share food, particularly when other communities consumed foods considered unacceptable within the family. Several families sent plates/empty tiffin boxes so children could avoid the plates provided by the school, which were handled by (potentially lower-caste) cooks/workers and used by children of diverse backgrounds. Thus, while children ate together, some (particularly from upper-caste backgrounds) used their own plates. In one instance, a mother (thirty-five) from an upper-caste, low-income family advised her daughters against eating food from others’ tiffin boxes, as they did not know ‘who they were’.
In another instance, a boy (eleven) in rural UP reported that certain children in the school were served differently from others, hinting at subtle caste-based discrimination:
Like we are there, we are holding our plate. Then they [MDMS staff] hold our plate and serve the food by their own hands. They [lower-caste classmates] are considered as dirty kids; they don’t take bath. They [lower-caste classmates] put the plate on the cemented platform, they [MDMS staff] put the food in the plate and then they [lower-caste classmates] take it from there.
He recalled that individuals labelled ‘dirty’ (possibly implying caste/perceived associated behaviours) were served food on a plate placed on a cement platform, rather than being handed plates directly, unlike village children known to school staff. Although rare, such accounts suggest that caste boundaries were mediated by familiarity: uncertainty about others’ identities could heighten concerns around purity and pollution, while established local relationships enabled these norms to be more routinely navigated. While most children did not explicitly mention caste discrimination while eating MDMS meals, instances like this highlighted the persistence of caste-based biases.
Families’ participation influenced by the perceived aspirational value of the MDMS food
While the MDMS was designed as a nutritional safety net, families evaluated it through the lens of aspirations, shaped by desires for dignity and mobility. Aspirational foods were defined not only by novelty or sensory appeal, but also by how food functioned as a measure of social worth. References to ‘better’ food reflected not just material longing, but an aspirational consciousness shaped by everyday encounters with inequality, comparison and hope, where families wanted meals to go beyond subsistence.
What counted as aspirational, however, varied significantly by social position. For families in extreme precarity, the MDMS already represented an improvement; for those with greater food security, it fell short on quality, taste and diversity. Children from socio-economically disadvantaged households held fewer negative views of school meals than those with access to better food at home. Daily wage labourer parents – constrained by time and resources – viewed the programme more favourably than families with more stable food environments. Participants used both home-cooked meals and food served in other schools as reference points, with aspirational food defined variously in terms of quantity, quality or variety. In contexts of acute food insecurity, even meals of limited taste were valued for their diversity.
Regional differences were notable. In Goa, the snack-based menu, typically served as breakfast, was valued partly because it differed from home food and carried a novelty that resonated with children. In UP, where meals were served closer to midday and resembled everyday home cooking, children were more likely to evaluate the food against familiar domestic standards. This made the MDMS meal feel ordinary rather than desirable, and children expressed clear desires for dishes like ‘kadi and rajma’, which were reserved for special occasions due to the cost of ingredients and the time-consuming preparation.Footnote 4
Participant perspectives on MDMS food were seldom framed through the language of nutrition. Children focused almost exclusively on taste and satiety. Parents were slightly more likely to mention nutrition but did so only when directly prompted. Mothers initially focused on whether food was filling and aligned with children’s preferences, acknowledging its nutritional value only when directly prompted. Fathers were generally dismissive and were less inclined to discuss the nutritional value of the food, even when questioned. Across all groups, taste, satiety and cultural acceptability took precedence over nutritional considerations.
Balancing competing needs amid precarity
For some families, the MDMS functioned as a critical buffer against precarity by supporting labour-intensive livelihoods, providing a safety net during temporary crises and reducing stigma through its universalisation. At the same time, the scheme’s benefits competed with other urgent needs in precarious households.
The MDMS as a safety net
For some families in extreme precarity, the scheme redistributed daytime caregiving responsibilities, enabling parents to engage in time-intensive labour while ensuring children received a freshly cooked meal during the day. The scheme also supported families experiencing more recent hardship. For example, a mother in Goa (thirty-five) described how recent financial difficulties had reduced the variety of foods available at home, making school meals an important source of dietary diversity. She shared, ‘the meals are definitely helpful; it is the only way my children can have vegetables now. Since their father faced losses in business, we just have rice and dal, no vegetables. But children need it’.
The MDMS served as a crucial nutritional safety net for children, even when parents saw little intrinsic value in the food provided. One child (thirteen) explained that while food at home had drastically changed due to a household crisis, she still received soya chunks at school. This was her favourite food. In another household, despite the grandfather’s dissatisfaction with the MDMS meals, the grandchild liked the school food. Such accounts highlight how parents might underestimate the value children placed on school meals.
The universal nature of the scheme safeguarded children in extreme precarity from disclosing their vulnerable circumstances in school. It minimised visible disparities, often reflected in differences in home-packed meals, thereby concealing children’s socio-economic backgrounds. For example, a participant (single mother, forty, three daughters in government school) in rural UP noted that even when she insisted on packing lunch, her children resisted, preferring MDMS meals because they did not want others to know what kind of food they ate at home (basic food like rice and dal). Her daughters (aged fourteen and ten), who excelled academically, did not want to be judged based on their food choices.
Opportunity costs of utilising the MDMS
The MDMS alone was rarely sufficient to offset the perceived opportunity costs of schooling. For some families, a child’s labour outweighed the value of a free meal; for others, concerns about educational quality or the hidden costs of free government schooling remained stronger deterrents.
For many families, the MDMS was evaluated against competing household priorities. The scheme’s benefits were understood as individual and school-bound, while food insecurity operated at the household level. In contexts of extreme precarity, children’s labour often took precedence over their school attendance, rendering the meal insufficient as an incentive. A participant (mother, forty) of four shared,
If she [daughter] goes to school, only she will eat. If she stays back at home, she will feed the other children and support me in the field. I don’t want to stop her school, but we need more hands [in the field]. More grains will help the entire family.
Intense labour requirements during agricultural seasons forced several children to drop out of school. In such situations, parents prioritised labour over education, viewing the trade-off as less unfair, especially when they believed that education might not lead to a better future.
While some families withdrew their children from schools at early signs of adversity, others devised strategies to sustain children’s schooling. For example, an agricultural worker (father, sixty) from UP highlighted the trade-off between the daughters’ education and family labour. Although school was free and included lunch, prioritising their schooling reduced available hands for sharecropping, worsening the family’s current problems in hope of a better future.
Now, I am doing whatever and pet kaat ke [idiom meaning to eat less than one’s hunger], I am getting them educated. Whatever it is, I hope their future gets made, mine is what it is. If they read and write, it is possible that they may have a bright future ahead…
The perceived value of the MDMS further diminished when families in precarious situations accounted for the hidden costs of ‘free’ education, such as transportation and tuition fees. These costs often dissuaded families from continuing schooling. Further, in families where substantial food was already prepared for the household, the MDMS offered little incentive to send children to school just for food.
For example, one mother (fifty) noted that while the school didn’t charge fees, the daily travel cost of ₹20 far exceeded their monthly budget. The free meal benefit was negligible, as cooking for an extra family member was a minor burden, and the transportation fare could be used to buy more groceries. Additionally, she mentioned her daughter (fifteen) could work in the field and earn ₹200 a day – a financial contribution, rather than a cost, to the household.
Girls were disproportionately affected by these trade-offs. While both boys and girls experienced educational disruption during periods of severe hardship, girls were more likely to be withdrawn from school earlier and to take on unpaid domestic responsibilities and low-wage work outside the home. Within households, they often assumed caregiving roles, substituting for mothers in managing domestic work and caring for younger siblings, thereby supporting household functioning and enabling male members to engage in paid work or continue schooling. In some cases, these shifts were further linked to early transitions into marriage, reinforcing gendered pathways. Boys, meanwhile, were more likely to either remain in school or take on paid wage labour outside the home, rarely assuming such domestic responsibilities.
Discussion
This paper argues for a shift from viewing school meals as individualised SP provisions targeting children’s nutrition and attendance, to understanding them as deeply embedded in the social and material fabric of the family. Three interconnected dynamics shaped how families engaged with and made sense of the MDMS. First, educational aspirations served as a powerful lens, with perceived school quality often overriding the value of meal provision. Consistent with Morrow’s (Reference Morrow2013) findings in Andhra Pradesh, aspirations for employment and upward mobility often justified significant sacrifices in the present, including compromises around food and nutrition. Yet such trade-offs carry short- and long-term implications for health and educational outcomes, potentially subverting the very goals they aim to support. At the same time, not all families could prioritise future-oriented aspirations. For some, immediate household needs and children’s labour took precedence, reflecting what reproductive justice scholars describe as ‘choiceless choices’, i.e. difficult trade-offs between essential needs to sustain everyday life, with such impossible choices resulting from structural constraints and inequities (Fledderjohann et al., Reference Fledderjohann, Patterson and Owino2023; Ross & Solinger, Reference Ross and Solinger2017).
Second, cultural meanings of food further mediated participation in ways that exceeded individual preference: gendered parenting norms, early food socialisation and caste and class identities together shaped whether engagement with the scheme was experienced as practical, shameful or socially demeaning. This tension can be understood through Finch’s (Reference Finch2007) concept of ‘family display’ – the active performance of identity to both household members and wider audiences. As Walker and Chase (Reference Walker and Chase2014) show, families perform normalcy to avoid shame, and displays involving children are particularly significant, communicating care, discipline and respectability to outsiders. Since eating practices are key forms of family display (James & Curtis, Reference James and Curtis2010), dependence on school meals risks being perceived as undermining the family’s capacity to demonstrate care, provision and self-sufficiency. Everyday negotiations around schooling, meal preparation and decisions about what children should (not) eat can be read as performance of parental responsibilities, such as enacting notions of ‘good mothering’ (Harman & Cappellini, Reference Harman and Cappellini2015). Extant work suggests middle-class parents are more concerned with the nutritional aspects of school food, while working-class parents prioritise its functionality (Wills et al., Reference Wills, Backett-Milburn, Roberts and Lawton2011). Our findings among mostly precarious families complicate this bifurcation: despite severe hardship, several families interpreted reliance on school meals negatively rather than as support.
Finally, the scheme’s value was never assessed in isolation but weighed against the broader pressures of precarious household life. While the MDMS offered a meaningful buffer for families in extreme hardship, its individually targeted design meant it could not adequately address the collective and competing demands – children’s labour, hidden schooling costs, household food insecurity – within which families were embedded. Consistent with Prakash (Reference Prakash2021), families’ engagement with the MDMS reflected aspirations that were neither freely chosen nor structurally determined, but were rather actively negotiated within socially defined limits.
Our findings demonstrate that the family is not merely a backdrop to school meal programmes but an active site where their meanings, limitations and possibilities are produced. Our analysis draws on a deliberately broad range of perspectives, including families not accessing the MDMS, households across different schooling contexts and older children – a ‘forgotten population’ in work on food and hunger (Hadley et al., Reference Hadley, Belachew, Lindstrom and Tessema2009). This polyvocal approach is a key methodological strength. First, interviewing multiple members of the same household independently surfaces both shared and divergent views within families. Second, speaking directly with children rather than relying solely on parental accounts reveals that they are active interpreters of the programme rather than passive recipients, exposing complexities that school-based or programme-level assessments routinely obscure. Our study also has several limitations: (1) findings from select regions of two states cannot be generalised to other areas, particularly given the significance of local social identities and contexts; (2) interviews conducted at home may have introduced social pressures, though this likely mitigated school-based participation biases; and (3) perspectives of state and school-level implementers were not captured.
Conclusion
While the MDMS remains a critical intervention, its three-decade legacy calls for a reorientation in how the programme is framed, delivered and understood. Our findings show that the effectiveness cannot be understood only in terms of nutrition or enrolment, but must be situated within families’ broader aspirations, identities and socio-economic circumstances. In the Indian context, this requires not only strengthening meal quality but addressing perceptions of government schooling and free meals through improvements in infrastructure, programme framing, cultural messaging and community co-design of menus. Reducing hidden and opportunity costs, such as transport or lost labour, and positioning the scheme as reducing maternal care burdens may further support participation. These insights carry relevance beyond India. For instance, Canada’s recently launched national school food programme (Government of Canada, 2026) would benefit from attending early to how families socially experience such provision, while the UK’s ongoing debates around means-testing and food quality (Holford & Rabe, Reference Holford and Rabe2024) point to the inseparability of targeting decisions from questions of stigma and social meaning. Across contexts, school meal programmes are best understood as socially mediated expressions of collective investment in children’s futures.
Acknowledgement
We would like to express heartfelt gratitude to the participants of this research for sharing their time and thoughts with us. We also thank Nashat Hayatullah for transcription assistance, Saadia Shah for project support, and the stakeholders of the Food Security for Equitable Futures project for their valuable inputs. Support for this project was provided by a grant from UKRI through a Future Leaders Fellowship [grant numbers MR/T021950/1 and MR/Y033965/1]. We gratefully acknowledge their support.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
Open access
