Jakarta. Presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto is following in India’s footsteps by promising that students will get free lunches if he wins the election in an effort to combat stunting, according to his campaign team.

If elected as president, Prabowo plans to supply free school meals and milk for students, including those studying at Islamic boarding schools, popularly known as pesantren. The free meal program will be available for students across all stages, starting from preschool to high school.

“We will provide free lunches and milk for schoolchildren. We are actually following India’s example here to give free meals for our schoolchildren to address stunting and many other things,” Dradjad H Wibowo, a senior economist in Prabowo’s campaign team, told the 2023 Indonesia Economic Forum on Wednesday.

“The nutrition intake among our schoolchildren is still way below the standards. We won’t be a strong nation if we don’t take care of our children,” Dradjad said.

Dradjad was referring to India’s Midday Meal Scheme, which serves free lunches to over 100 million Indian students across each school day. This makes it the world’s largest school nutrition program. The Midday Meal Scheme began in 1995 and sought to improve children’s nutritional status. In 2021, India renamed the program to PM Poshan and aimed to feed 118 million students studying in 1.12 million government schools.

Prabowo’s manifesto also shows his plans to distribute nutritional aid for pregnant women and toddlers across the archipelago. The school meal initiative, coupled with the pregnant women's nutritional aid, will have over 80 million beneficiaries. Prabowo aims to achieve a 100-percent distribution rate in such assistance by 2029.

“[By] providing nutrition for pregnant women, we will take care of our children from when they are still in their mother’s wombs,” Dradjad said. 

The Health Ministry reported Indonesia’s stunting rate stood at 21.6 percent as of 2022. Jokowi is currently aiming to lower the country’s stunting rate to 14 percent by next year.

Prabowo is aiming for Indonesia’s presidency with Gibran Rakabuming Raka --Jokowi’s son and Solo Mayor-- as his running mate. About 204.8 million Indonesians will cast their votes in February.

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