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Gibran sends team to study India's school lunch program
The vice president-elect has sent a study team to India to take a look at that country's school lunch program to seek out the scheme with the best model and budget for Indonesia.
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President-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and vice president-elect Gibran Rakabuming Raka attend on March 29, 2024 a breaking-o-the-fast event hosted by the Golkar Party in Jakarta. (Antara/Erlangga Bregas Prakoso)
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The pair is on the lookout for a winning formula to combat the prevalence of childhood stunting in Indonesia, amid growing criticism over the initial projected costs of the program’s and the considerable burden this would incur on the state budget.
Gibran, the incumbent mayor of Surakarta and eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, said he had dispatched a team to India to take cues from the long-running school lunch program in the world’s most populous country.
He confirmed on Tuesday that he had sent a team to conduct “a study and other things”, state news agency Antara reported, saying that he wanted to implement the best, most cost-efficient scheme to avoid burdening state finances.
Gibran said he intended to glean insights from the experiences and best practices of other countries in running a free school lunch program, “including the effects on children and students, how the distribution scheme works and what the logistics are like”.
He had raised the matter on Monday in a meeting with Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Sandeep Chakravorty at Surakarta City Hall.
Taking a page from India was appropriate, Gibran said, given the apparent success of its school lunch program and that country’s relatively comparable population size.
With around 279 million people, Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world but has just 19.5 percent of India’s population of over 1.43 billion people, according to 2024 data from Statista.
"The ambassador said [India’s program] cost just 11 US cents per child, because [the country’s] logistics and distribution is very efficient,” Gibran said.
By comparison, the estimated cost per child for the Prabowo-Gibran team’s free school lunch program is Rp 15,000 (94 cents).
The school visit followed the defense minister’s talks with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang and Defense Minister Dong Jun earlier that day.
On Monday, the Gerindra Party chairman attended a high-profile meeting with President Xi Jinping, who had invited him to visit China.
Accompanied by officials of Beijing No. 2 Middle School, located in the Chinese capital’s Dongcheng district, the president-elect inspected the school cafeteria during lunch, when servers dished out neatly arranged portions of various healthy foods that included animal protein, vegetables and snacks.
“Very healthy,” Prabowo said, on seeing the school’s lunch menu.
The presidential pair campaigned on a promise to provide free lunches at all primary and secondary schools in their 2024 election bid.
Their campaign team has said the program, which also targets pregnant women and toddlers, will be implemented in stages to account for costs and aims to cover over 80 million beneficiaries by 2029.
Several members of the Jokowi administration sought to test the policy parameters at a meeting on Feb. 26 to discuss the draft 2025 state fiscal policy.
Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto, who is also chairman of the Golkar Party, a key member of the 10-party Onward Indonesia Coalition (KIM) that backed Prabowo’s presidential bid, even inspected a ministry-funded free lunch pilot at a Tangerang school.
However, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the program had not been included in next year’s draft fiscal policy. (tjs)
