Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay has decided to keep and enhance the Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme, a prominent welfare initiative from the MK Stalin administration. The scheme, which provides meals to school children, will now bear the name of Congress leader Kamaraj, giving it a fresh political identity. This move reflects the government’s commitment to child welfare while also aligning the initiative with the legacy of a celebrated political figure.
His government has announced initiatives including a dedicated women police force to tackle crimes against women and free silk sarees for brides. Vijay is not merely addressing today’s schoolchildren through welfare – he is nurturing a relationship with the next generation that already forms an important part of his mass following. The decision to extend free breakfast to students up to Class VIII means Vijay is not dismantling a flagship scheme of the previous government. Instead, his government is adding to a programme that has become closely associated with the DMK’s welfare record. For a government keen to establish its own welfare credentials, the political choice is significant – retain a popular DMK initiative, expand its reach, but change its name. The programme ensured that children from economically weaker families did not begin their school day hungry besides improving attendance, concentration, reducing drop out from education and ultimately improving the outcome of school education. Children And Women – From Fan Base To Political Constituencies There is another political dimension to Vijay’s focus on welfare for children and women. Children themselves do not vote, but their enthusiasm for Vijay has been seen to influence voting choices within families, with parents and grandparents saying their children’s support for the actor-turned-politician had shaped their own decisions. Vijay has also publicly acknowledged the support of children, youth and women, highlighting the role he believes they played in mobilising families and encouraging voter participation. That makes the focus on children politically interesting. The same political attention is visible in his focus on women, another important constituency for his movement.
Because it has been positioned as more than a food-distribution scheme, from Stalin’s Scheme To Kamaraj’s Name Why Stalin’s Scheme Matters Politically The breakfast programme is particularly significant. The breakfast scheme, free branded bicycles for higher-secondary students and other child-focused measures including free gold ring for newborns in government hospitals, therefore sit within a broader political strategy of staying connected with families – including the younger generation that helped turn Vijay’s enormous fan following into political support. Launched by the MK Stalin government in 2022 as the Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme, it initially covered primary schoolchildren in government schools and was subsequently expanded to students in government-aided schools. Vijay’s government is now taking it further, bringing another 15.30 lakh students in 15,454 government and government-aided schools under the programme. An additional Rs 217.63 crore has been allocated. It would totally cost the government Rs 724 crore.
On the decision to name the scheme after Kamaraj, he said, “Kamaraj is the one who launched this and it’s only fitting. Stalin introduced the free breakfast programme. The government has renamed the Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme as the Perunthalaivar Kamarajar Breakfast Scheme, invoking the legacy of former Chief Minister and Congress leader K Kamaraj, who is widely associated with the expansion of school education and the state’s school-meal initiatives. The name change has predictably triggered a political debate over who gets credit for the scheme. The DMK, however, has criticised the move. That exchange captures the larger political contest over welfare ownership in Tamil Nadu – whether a successor government inherits a popular scheme, or whether it can claim political ownership by expanding and rebranding it. Vijay seen serving breakfast to school students A Welfare Legacy Built Across Governments Tamil Nadu’s school-meal history itself makes the politics of ownership more interesting. Kamaraj subsequently played a major role in expanding school education and the school-meal programme. MGR transformed it into the Nutritious Meal Scheme. Karunanidhi added eggs to the menu. Vijay is now adding another layer by extending breakfast to middle-school students. Vijay inaugurated the expansion of the Perunthalaivar Kamarajar Morning Meal Scheme at Gandhi Gramam, Chennai Central School This has inevitably invited comparisons with another star-turned-Chief Minister MGR, who built a powerful welfare-oriented political identity and remained in power for three consecutive terms till his death. The Kamaraj Factor – And The Congress Alliance The choice of Kamaraj’s name adds another layer to the politics. Congress is a crucial ally of the minority TVK government, whose support has helped Vijay’s government cross the majority mark in the Assembly. The Congress, however, has been uncomfortable with the growing chorus within the TVK projecting Vijay as a potential prime ministerial face, with the party maintaining that Rahul Gandhi is its choice for prime minister. Against this backdrop, invoking Kamaraj – one of Tamil Nadu Congress’s most enduring political icons – gives the alliance an additional symbolic dimension.
The roots go back to the Justice Party era under British rule, when a meal programme was introduced at a Chennai Corporation school in 1920 in the then Madras Presidency.
The name change of the breakfast scheme has, predictably, started a row “We aren’t bothered who launched it, but we want people to benefit and hence we are enhancing this and even Amma Canteens Jayalalithaa launched,” TVK national spokesperson Americai Narayanan told NDTV. “Their only job is to change the name of schemes we launched, they don’t do anything on their own,” DMK spokesperson TKS Elangovan said.
