The Midday Meal Scheme, or PM-Poshan Shakti Nirman in Hindi, is a mandatory but free school meal programme in India designed to enhance the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in government primary and upper primary schools, government-aided anganwadis (pre-school), madrasas and maqtabs. Serving 120 million children in over 1.27 million schools and Education Guarantee Scheme centres, the Midday Meal Scheme is the largest of its kind in the world.

In 1920, A. Subbarayalu Reddiar, the first Chief Minister of the Madras Presidency, introduced the mid-day meal scheme in a Corporation school in the Thousand Lights area. The initiative was based on the idea proposed by P. Theagaraya Chetty, who was serving as the President of the Justice Party at the time.

The Midday Meal Scheme has been implemented in the Union Territory of Puducherry under the French Administration since 1930. In post-independent India, the Midday Meal Scheme was first launched in Tamil Nadu, pioneered by the former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj in the early 1960s. By 2002, the scheme was implemented in all of the states under the orders of the Supreme Court of India.

In 2021, the Central Government announced that an additional 2.4 million students receiving pre-primary education at government and government-aided schools would also be included under the scheme by 2022.^{[needs update]}

Under article 24, paragraph 2c of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a party, India has committed to yielding "adequate nutritious food" for children. The programme has undergone many changes since its launch in 1995. The Midday Meal Scheme is covered by the National Food Security Act, 2013. The legal backing for the Indian school meal programme is akin to the legal backing provided in the US through the National School Lunch Act.

The Midday Meal Scheme refers to the government of India programme introduced in all government elementary schools to provide children with cooked lunches. Tamil Nadu was the first state in India to introduce this scheme. The first school which had the scheme was the Sourashtra Boys Higher Secondary School, Madurai, which implemented it in 1955. On 28 November 2001 the Supreme Court asked all state governments to begin this programme in their schools within 6 months. The programme has shown many positive effects. Many parents who couldn't send their children to schools due to poverty, were eager to get their children free nutritious food and this incentivized them to send their children to school. The Midday Meal Scheme increased the number of school-going children.

The roots of the programme can be traced back to the pre-independence era, when a midday meal programme was introduced in 1925 in Tamil Nadu. Initiatives by state governments began in the 1962–63 school year.

The Indian state Tamil Nadu was a pioneer in introducing midday meal programmes in India to increase the number of children enrolling in school; K. Kamaraj, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, introduced it first in Chennai and later extended it to all districts of Tamil Nadu. During 1982, 1 July onwards, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M. G. Ramachandran upgraded the existing midday meal scheme in the state to 'Nutritious noon-meal scheme' keeping in mind that around 68 lakh children were malnourished. Gujarat was the second state to introduce an MDM scheme in 1984, but it was later discontinued.