Tamil daily mocks free breakfast scheme; CM, Congress hit back

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Congress in Tamil Nadu has reacted sharply to an article in popular Tamil daily Dinamalar for mocking chief minister MK Stalin’s free breakfast scheme. The article, which was carried on the front page, said that the scheme has led to students overflowing their school toilets, people familiar with the matter said.

Dinamalar’s editions in the districts of Salem and Erode carried a headline, ‘Breakfast Scheme: Students get two-square meals, toilets are overflowing in schools’. The news article said that since students have their breakfast in school for the second time after their mothers feed them at home, they get the urge to rush to washrooms, which are “overcrowded” for the past one week.

Chief minister Stalin condemned the piece by saying that the article has reflected the ‘Sanathana character’ of the paper. Meanwhile, the Congress said that the “Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP’s) mouth piece” represents third rate journalism.

“The Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme is a pioneer scheme in India and a model for others to emulate. Though the new National Education Policy, 2020 rolled out by the Union government has suggested that free breakfast should be provided to school students along with a mid-day-meal, they have not made any effort towards the implementation of the scheme,” Stalin said.

The breakfast scheme was launched by the chief minister in September 2022 to provide nutritious breakfast to one-lakh students studying in classes 1 to 5 across 1,545 government schools. A sum of ₹33.56 crore was allocated towards the scheme. On August 25, Stalin expanded the scheme to cover 17-lakh students across 31,000 government schools studying in classes 1 to 5 and a sum of ₹404-crore has been allocated towards the scheme this year.

Stalin said that the Dravidian movement was born to achieve social justice while the propagators of the Manu Smrithi were exploiting the working class and the oppressed. “It was the Dravidian rule that smashed the principle of “give anything but not education to Shudras” by unleashing an education revolution in the Tamil land,” Stalin said in a statement. “If Sanathanam [those propagating Sanathana Dharma] can give such a headline in the 21st century when we send spacecraft to the Moon, what would they have done 100 years ago. What would have been the condition of the oppressed? That grudge hasn’t gone away,” he said.

Tamil Nadu Congress Committee spokesperson Lakshmi Ramachandran said, “Terrible journalism! @BJP4TamilNadu ‘s mouthpiece as terrible as the party itself!. May the food you consume nourish your brain too, to rid you of your biases and ill-intentions @dinamalarweb. Condemn the third-rate journalism.”