
India's Free Lunch
India's midday meal scheme feeds tens of millions of primary school children every day, a policy in place nationwide since 2001. The film follows the program seven years in, visiting classrooms and kitchens where volunteers and cooks prepare the same free lunch that keeps children in their seats through the afternoon. Teachers and health workers describe what changed: truancy rates that once emptied classrooms have dropped, and children who used to show up hungry are visibly healthier. Officials and researchers weigh in on how a scheme this size actually runs, from sourcing grain to reaching remote villages, and what it costs against what it saves in dropped-out years and stunted growth. The film also tracks the interest the program has drawn abroad, with Western governments studying whether a state-run lunch could do for their own attendance and nutrition numbers what it has done in India. It is a plain account of a policy working at scale, told through the people who cook it, teach it, and eat it.