CSR in India is often centred on projects with defined timelines, while many social programmes depend on systems that function over long periods. The PM POSHAN programme, which underpins India’s school feeding effort, illustrates how delivery at scale relies on institutional processes, coordination, and continuity. In this opinion piece, Mr. Dhananjay Ganjoo, Chief Marketing and Resource Mobilization Officer at The Akshaya Patra Foundation, explains why CSR funding can be more effective when it supports and strengthens such systems rather than operating in isolation. Using the school feeding ecosystem as context, the article examines how investments in capacity, processes, and infrastructure can support programme delivery beyond individual funding cycles. It invites Corporate India to reflect on how CSR strategies can align more closely with the long-term needs of public delivery systems.
Why CSR Should Fund Systems, Not Just Projects: The Case for an Institutionalised School Feeding System
India's PM POSHAN Abhiyaan (previously known as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme) is one of the world's most significant social infrastructure undertakings. Providing daily meals for 116.3 million children with a ₹1.31 trillion investment [1] symbolizes a commitment that has been continuously met at scale. Delivering at this scale requires strong coordination, clear policy frameworks, efficient administrative systems and extensive operational networks. These elements show what consistent vision and long-term effort can achieve in improving lives.
The opportunity for Corporate India lies in recognizing that the most impactful partnerships reinforce and strengthen institutional systems rather than operating alongside them. The value of investing in system-level programmes is magnified across ecosystems. This represents a fundamental difference in approach and outcome.
Consider how partnerships at the system level are effective. When our supply chains become better and more efficient, the rewards don’t just stop at one point. They ripple across entire networks, making operations more orderly and reliable. Training programmes for government nutritionists and meal administrators cultivate knowledge that has a place in the system despite changes in personnel and situations. Infrastructure upgrades made possible by cooperation and collaboration are put into maintenance routines and operating structures. The improvements reinforce what is already in place, enabling institutions to prioritize their core responsibilities more efficiently.
This strategic rationale is a clear departure from the standard project-based model of corporate enterprise. A company might allocate resources directly in meal support, ensuring nutrition to children daily. Alternatively, it might invest in standardizing how government health workers act toward nutrition advice, which would reverberate through institutions over the years. Both create genuine impact. The former ensures children receive meals, while the latter ensures the institution can sustain and scale that provision across communities. In fact, the most effective partnerships often leverage both approaches, combining direct programme support with strategic system strengthening, recognising that each amplifies the other’s reach.
The economic case for this approach is compelling. Investing in nutrition pays $23 [2] according to the World Bank, but those returns come not merely from funding but also from the role of the resources in building the foundational systems. Effects become self-reinforcing when partnerships serve as an integral part of processes and objectives instead of functioning tangentially to them. The institution inherits better systems, upskilling, and institutional learning that endures long outside partnership timelines.
What does effective system-level partnership look like in practice? It emphasizes government objectives and processes alignment, whether through direct program support or institutional strengthening. It invests in bolstering existing mechanisms, like procurement systems, quality monitoring, training of front-line workers, and infrastructure, working with the institutional frameworks. It defines success through multiple lenses: the immediate reach of the programme and the long-term capacity of institutions, measured across timeframes that reflect both immediate impact and sustained change.
Across India's school nutrition landscape, districts where corporates have invested strategically in system capacity demonstrate tangible gains. These come not by virtue of corporate branding or campaign awareness but from institutional upgrading: better-trained personnel, systems of operation, better infrastructure, and better coordination. The benefits are compounded, as systems grow more innovative and self-reliant. School meals reach more children more consistently. Nutritional standards improve. Local administration becomes more effective at managing the program's complexities.
This model of partnership manifests a philosophy about how change begins at scale. When corporations invest resources in building capacity, the institution performs its core duties more efficiently. By focusing investment on system strengthening, benefits spread to significantly more children than a few isolated projects ever could. When partnerships establish embedded institutional knowledge, impact extends beyond their partnership. A compound benefit that can last years.
The PM Poshan program in India has built the systems for child nutrition at scale. Corporate India leverages the strategic opportunity of strengthening such machinery—the ability to take what works and build deeper institutional capacity, delivering cumulative value through systems. That is not to say that we should criticize existing systems; rather, we accept that the highest impact corporations can do is to support strong institutions build even greater capacity
This moment demands clear corporate vision and a public mission. When CSR funding supports nutrition programmes, whether through direct meal provision or through strategic system building, it provides significant benefit to both the children and the institution. The partnership that is strategized and institutionally strengthening is how corporations and governments jointly are taking India’s nutrition agenda forward sustainably for generations. In doing so, these efforts also lay the foundation for building the workforce of tomorrow at the grassroots, equipping future generations with the health and capacity they need to thrive.
References:
[1] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2120666
[2] https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/voices/investing-in-nutrition-is-smart-economics
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