Centralised Kitchens and School Nutrition Under Pm Poshan in Bihar:An Evaluation of Food Quality, Delivery and Stakeholder Perceptions

Abstract

The Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN) programme seeks to improve children's nutrition and support regular participation in elementary education. Centralised kitchens operated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are used in some locations to prepare meals at scale and supply them to schools. This article evaluates the functioning of seven NGO-managed centralised kitchens serving schools in four districts of Bihar. The study uses primary field information from 48 schools and responses from 48 headmasters, 100 teachers, 187 school cooks, 505 beneficiary students and 106 students who were not consuming the supplied meal. The analysis covers infrastructure, hygiene, food quality, transportation, delivery, student participation, teacher workload and stakeholder perceptions. The evidence shows that the centralised kitchens generally had satisfactory infrastructure and hygiene arrangements and that the model reduced teachers' involvement in meal preparation. However, food taste, the time between preparation and consumption, transportation constraints, local food preferences and inadequate school-level eating space remained important concerns. The evaluation report estimated that about 61 per cent of enrolled students in the surveyed schools were MDM beneficiaries and found no specific attendance improvement attributable to the centralised kitchen arrangement. The study argues that the effectiveness of centralised kitchens depends not only on cooking capacity but also on last-mile logistics, local acceptability, school-level monitoring and infrastructure. A context-specific or hybrid model is therefore recommended, with centralised kitchens for schools with feasible connectivity and local cooking arrangements where distance, road conditions or small enrolment make centralised delivery inefficient.