Akshay Patra: A Model Public-Private Partnership in Mid-Day Meal Program

In a country where millions of children still drop out of school due to hunger, one initiative has demonstrated that the most powerful classroom tool might simply be a hot, nutritious meal. The Akshaya Patra Foundation – running the world’s largest NGO-operated mid-day meal program – is living proof that when governments, civil society, and corporations join hands around a shared educational goal, the results can be transformational. The story of Akshaya Patra, particularly its operations in Jaipur, Rajasthan, is one of the most cited examples of a successful public-private partnership (PPP) in Indian education.

What is a public-private partnership in education? 🔗

A public-private partnership (PPP) in education refers to a formal arrangement where government bodies collaborate with private organizations – corporations, NGOs, or philanthropic foundations – to jointly fund, implement, or manage educational services. The government typically provides policy backing, regulatory oversight, and partial funding, while the private partner brings operational efficiency, technology, and additional resources.

In the context of school education in India, PPPs have become increasingly important in filling the gaps that government programs alone cannot cover. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme – now known as the PM POSHAN Abhiyaan – is one of the most prominent platforms through which such partnerships operate. In the centralized model, an external organization cooks and delivers meals to schools, mostly through public-private partnerships, with NGOs like Akshaya Patra Foundation serving as implementing partners alongside state governments. This model allows for greater scale, better hygiene standards through mechanization, and more consistent meal delivery than a school-by-school approach.

The Akshaya Patra initiative: from a temple kitchen to a national movement 🔗

The Akshaya Patra story has its roots in a deeply human moment of compassion. Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, once witnessed a group of children fighting with stray dogs over scraps of food. Deeply moved, he resolved that nobody near his center should go to bed hungry. That conviction became the founding philosophy of what would eventually become the Akshaya Patra Foundation.

The Foundation started its school lunch program in the year 2000, feeding 1,500 children in five schools in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The initiative was driven by Madhu Pandit Dasa and Chanchalapathi Dasa, both full-time missionaries at ISKCON Bangalore and graduates of IIT-Bombay, who brought engineering sensibility to what was essentially a social mission. Mohandas Pai, a director at Infosys Technologies, had suggested to Madhu Pandit, chairman of ISKCON, that the temple take on the responsibility of feeding underprivileged children in nearby schools – a suggestion that set the entire program in motion.

The results were immediate: headmasters of the beneficiary schools reported increases in attendance and marked improvements in student health and academic performance. Word spread fast, and requests began pouring in from schools across Bangalore. The challenge was no longer motivation – it was scale. The founders responded by designing centralized, mechanized kitchens capable of producing tens of thousands of meals per day with consistent quality and hygiene.

When the Government of India launched its Mid-Day Meal Scheme formally in 2001 – backed by a Supreme Court directive – Akshaya Patra collaborated with the Ministry of Human Resource Development and state governments to implement it. This transformed Akshaya Patra from a local NGO into the backbone of one of the world’s most ambitious school feeding programs. Today, the Foundation serves over 2.25 million children through its network of kitchens in 78 locations across 16 states and 3 Union Territories.

Akshaya Patra in Jaipur, Rajasthan: the PPP model in action 🔗

Among Akshaya Patra’s many operational units across India, the Jaipur kitchen stands out as a textbook example of how a PPP can be structured and scaled within a state context. Akshaya Patra started its operations in Rajasthan in February 2004 by setting up a centralized kitchen in Jaipur. Today, Rajasthan has grown into one of the Foundation’s significant operational hubs, with ten kitchens currently feeding over 2,53,217 children across 3,351 schools.

The Jaipur kitchen – located at Mahal Yojana, Goner Road, Jagatpura – operates under an ISO 22000:2005 certification, which guarantees food safety management at par with international standards. The kitchen prepares nearly 92,763 meals every day, using mechanized processes that maintain hygiene, nutrition, and speed simultaneously. Meals are packed into insulated stainless steel containers and dispatched in custom-designed vehicles to reach schools on time, even those located dozens of kilometers away.

This kind of large-scale, high-quality operation is only possible because of the multi-stakeholder support structure that Akshaya Patra has built – one that is characteristic of effective PPPs.

Corporate and government support: who funds the program? 🔗

Akshaya Patra’s financial architecture is deliberately designed to be a collaborative ecosystem. The government provides per-child funding under the PM POSHAN scheme, while corporate donors, international foundations, and individual supporters bridge the gap between government allocations and the full operational cost of delivering high-quality meals.

The role of the Infosys Foundation 🔗

The Infosys Foundation has been one of Akshaya Patra’s most consistent and impactful long-term partners, with its support directly benefiting Rajasthan’s program. Infosys Foundation funds have been used to cover operational costs at the Jodhpur kitchen and to support the cost of daily mid-day meals and clean drinking water for 1.5 lakh children in Rajasthan. Beyond just meals, the Infosys Foundation has extended its support to include critical infrastructure. The Infosys grant also helped Akshaya Patra adopt closed-vessel cooking technology by importing Tetra Pak cooking machines from Sweden – a significant technological leap that improved both nutrition retention and food safety.

Sudha Murty, Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation, inaugurated a safe drinking water project for government school children in Jaipur, providing clean water access to over 50,000 children across 203 schools – a direct complement to the nutrition program. Narayana Murthy, Founder of Infosys, has publicly described Akshaya Patra as perhaps the largest and most successful public-private partnership in the country.

The role of Airtel and Birla Group 🔗

Corporate India’s engagement with Akshaya Patra extends well beyond a single conglomerate. Bharti Airtel and the Aditya Birla Group have both contributed to the Foundation’s expansion in Rajasthan – a state where both companies have had deep business roots. Airtel, through its CSR arm, has supported meal-provisioning costs for children in government schools, aligned with its stated commitments to education and community development. The Birla Group, with its long philanthropic legacy in Rajasthan, has similarly contributed to the Foundation’s infrastructure and operational expenses in the state, making it possible to expand the network of centralized kitchens beyond Jaipur to towns like Nathdwara, Jodhpur, and Bikaner.

These corporate contributions are largely structured as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) investments, which under India’s Companies Act, 2013, are mandated for large companies meeting certain financial thresholds. This legal framework has been a key enabler of sustained corporate support for programs like Akshaya Patra across India. In 2017, for instance, Akshaya Patra signed an MOU with the Rural Electrification Corporation Limited (RECL) to open a kitchen in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, entirely funded under RECL’s CSR policy – demonstrating how diverse the PPP funding ecosystem can become.

Beyond domestic corporations, the Clinton Foundation, under the Clinton Global Initiative, has raised awareness and motivated business houses and corporates to fund Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal program in Rajasthan, bringing international attention to what is essentially a grassroots educational intervention.

Impact on school children: the evidence on the ground 🔗

The impact of Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal program, especially in Rajasthan, is measurable across multiple dimensions – attendance, nutrition, retention, and academic engagement.

Improved attendance and reduced dropout rates 🔗

A 2006 study by AC Nielsen (Mumbai) observed that the mid-day meal program not only improved the nutritional status of children but also resulted in increased enrollment and attendance in schools, and that the rate of dropouts considerably reduced. These findings align with the broader research on school feeding. A systematic review published in a peer-reviewed journal found that the prospect of receiving food serves as a significant motivator for school attendance, particularly in lower-income families, and that the impact of free school meals on attendance is most pronounced in areas experiencing high levels of poverty – precisely the demographic Akshaya Patra targets.

For many children coming from impoverished households in Rajasthan’s rural blocks, the Akshaya Patra meal is not supplementary – it is often the only hot meal of the day. The assurance of that meal becomes a powerful pull factor for both the child and the parent.

Nutritional benefits and cognitive development 🔗

Schools providing cooked meals are mostly government or government-aided schools where the cost of schooling is generally lower, attracting children from lower economic strata who are more likely to be undernourished – making targeted meal programs especially crucial. A nutritious meal not only improves physical health but also has a profound impact on cognitive development, school attendance, and academic performance. Hungry children find it hard to concentrate; well-nourished ones are more engaged, more attentive, and more likely to complete their schooling.

Akshaya Patra’s menu planning in Rajasthan is also sensitive to regional food habits. Across its kitchens, meals are adapted to local preferences – wheat-based rotis being the staple in North India. The Jaipur kitchen, for example, is equipped with high-speed roti-making machines capable of processing tens of thousands of rotis per hour, which makes it possible to maintain both cultural acceptability and nutritional value at scale.

Academic recognition and replication 🔗

Akshaya Patra’s operational model has attracted global academic attention. In 2007, Harvard Business School conducted a study on the operations of Akshaya Patra and included it in their MBA curriculum as a case study on precision and time management – an unusual honor for an NGO. The Foundation was studied again by Harvard in 2017. These studies have helped position Akshaya Patra not just as a charity but as a management model worth studying and replicating.

Akshaya Patra has received the Gandhi Peace Prize 2016 for its contribution toward the socioeconomic development of India, as well as the Nikkei Asia Prize in the Economic and Business Innovation category – recognitions that underscore the program’s significance far beyond its immediate humanitarian value.

Why Akshaya Patra is a benchmark for PPPs in education 🔗

What makes the Akshaya Patra model genuinely instructive for educational management is not just its scale, but its structure. Several features make it a replicable benchmark:

Clearly defined roles: The government provides the policy mandate, land, and per-child subsidy; Akshaya Patra brings management expertise, technology, and fundraising capacity; corporates bring additional capital through CSR. There is no ambiguity about who does what.

Technology-driven efficiency: The use of mechanized kitchens, ISO-certified processes, and specially designed transport vehicles ensures that quality is not sacrificed for quantity. This approach directly addressed the common criticism that large-scale centralized meal programs compromise hygiene.

Community accountability: The foundation maintains regular nutrition audits, engages local communities, and adapts menus to regional palates – building trust among schools, parents, and local governments.

Financial transparency: Akshaya Patra has been awarded the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) Gold Shield for Excellence in Financial Reporting on seven occasions – a critical factor in sustaining donor confidence over the long term.

The Jaipur kitchen, in particular, encapsulates this model: government-backed, corporate-funded, professionally managed, and child-centric. It shows that a PPP in education need not be complicated to be effective – it needs to be purposeful, accountable, and built around the actual needs of the child.

What do you think? If public-private partnerships like Akshaya Patra can so demonstrably improve school attendance and nutrition, what might be holding back wider adoption of this model in other areas of educational infrastructure – and how can educational managers and policymakers better design accountability frameworks to ensure such partnerships remain truly child-centered rather than donor-driven?

References

1. https://www.akshayapatra.org
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midday_Meal_Scheme
3. https://akshayapatra.org.uk/our-story/
4. https://www.akshayapatra.org/history
5. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/akshaya-patra-improving-education-one-meal-at-a-time/
6. https://www.akshayapatrausa.org/about-us/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshaya_Patra_Foundation
8. https://rajasthan.akshayapatra.org/about-us
9. https://rajasthan.akshayapatra.org/photo-gallery/jaipur-kitchen
10. https://www.akshayapatra.org/news-from-infosys-foundation-and-akshaya-patra
11. https://www.akshayapatra.org/news/we-are-opening-a-kitchen-in-bhilwara
12. https://rajasthan.akshayapatra.org/news/a-day-with-bill-clinton
13. https://www.iskconbangalore.org/akshaya-patra/
14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11256073/
15. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10783765/
16. https://balrakshabharat.org/blog/others/how-do-mid-day-meal-schemes-boost-education-nutrition-in-india/