Every day, around 466 million children in 176 countries across the world receive school meal programs at their schools. Several countries, such as Indonesia, Ukraine, and Canada, have launched national school meal programs for the first time. This number has risen by 48 million children since 2022, or 20% in the last four years, according to the World Food Programme (WFP) report State of School Feeding Worldwide 2024. This program also creates jobs (7.4 million cooks alone), supports local farmers, and increases school attendance.

School feeding programs have become a priority in many countries. However, in the implementation process, many countries meet almost similar challenges, ranging from poisoning incidents such as in India and Peru, to problems of corruption, weak transparency, and accountability, as in Nigeria and Ghana.

In January 2025, Indonesia launched the Free Nutritious Meal Program (Makan Bergizi Gratis, MBG) with a target of reaching 83 million school children by 2029 and encountered challenges ranging from chaotic implementation, closed tenders, and mass poisoning, to allegations of corruption in procurement, disputes over authority between the Indonesian National Army (TNI) and the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB), and cases of alleged child rights violations.

School Free Meal Programs as an Unintended Policy Effect

One crucial dimension that is rarely tapped into is how school free meal programs, as an ‘unintended policy effect’, can become an instrument of political education and shape the youth's perceptions of the state and their political participation.

As Joe Soss (1999) reminds us, welfare policies do not merely deliver material benefits. Beyond feeding children, the program is a civic classroom where citizens learn how the government actually works. Hearing whether their complaints or voices are heard, seeing whether the process is transparent, and sensing whether their participation matters, in turn, all these experiences ultimately shape citizens’ trust in the state.

Experience with a single government program can provide everyday political learning of how the government works as a whole. If the experience is positive, citizens tend to believe more strongly that their political participation matters. Conversely, if the experience is negative–fraught with red tape, lack of transparency, or even harmful–citizens learn that the state does not care about their voices.

The Case of Indonesia: Policy Lessons

MBG in Indonesia is not an ordinary program. With a budget of 71 trillion rupiah in 2025 and a target of 83 million recipients by 2029, this is a program that directly touches the lives of millions of Indonesian families. Unlike school-managed School Operational Assistance (BOS) funds or parent-distributed cash aid, MBG delivers meals directly to classrooms daily, which creates routine state-child interactions.

Picture a sixth grader eating MBG food every day. Tasty and hygienic meals teach trust in the government. In contrast, spoiled food, frequent poisonings, and ignored complaints teach the public to distrust the government and that protesting is futile.

Why is that now important to understand?

In the 2024 presidential election, around 67-71 percent of Generation Z voters voted for Prabowo. This young generation has no direct memory of the New Order or military repression. Their political preferences are shaped primarily by their own experiences and perceptions, including interactions with previous government programs.

Some current MBG recipients may be eligible to vote in the 2029 general election. As Indonesian law dictates that voters must be at least 17 years old, roughly 20.4 million MBG alumni (BPS, 2024, 2025), equivalent to 9.5% of total voters as in the 2024 election, will be casting their first ballots. Even if their numbers are not particularly large in the eyes of politicians, their future impact—both activism in electoral and beyond elections, including online and street rallies—could be significant for Indonesia's political landscape.

Students who grow up with the MBG program will carry concrete memories—of its successes or failures, and of whether the government was responsive or indifferent. Those memories could influence their choices at the polling stations or even fuel their future political activism, as seen in the mass protests by Generation Z in Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Morocco, and many other countries, which have had an imprint on the instability of those countries.

More importantly, MBG has the potential to shape the concept of citizenship. Until now, civic education in Indonesia has been predominantly textbook-based. MBG offers a real-world version of civic education, where children and parents interact with officials, vendors, and surveillance systems. Two possible trajectories worth examining.

One path is political quietism. If MBG is implemented with a rigid top-down approach without meaningful room for dialogue and complaints are ignored, citizens may learn to remain silent. This lesson can carry over into adulthood and voting age, creating a generation of voters who tend to be passive and uncritical.

Another path is political activation. If the MBG is designed with a tangible complaint mechanism, involves student representatives and their parents in the oversight committee, and demonstrates that complaints lead to improvements, the program could normalize a culture of free speech and collective problem-solving. This might foster a generation that is more critical, politically active, and confident that their participation matters.

That said, which path will be taken depends greatly on the design of the program.

The controversies inherent in MBG implementation must be understood as more than operational failures, as they convey symbolic messages. This situation sends a message to citizens about who is in power, how decisions are made, and whether there is accountability.

When thousands of students are poisoned, and the response is slow, the lesson learned is not about weak quality control. Rather, the lesson is that the state does not protect us, and our complaints are not heard. This lowers what is called “political efficacy,” the belief that our political actions matter. Without it, political participation feels pointless.

Bring Policy Back In

Political analysists have been too absorbed with money politics, oligarchy, and patronage-clientelism in explaining Indonesian politics. From money politics and elite networks to rent-seeking practices, all of these focuses are indeed important. But we often forget that policies themselves have independent political effects. In other words, to understand Indonesian politics more fully, we need to bring the policy back in.

MBG may have been born from electoral calculations and compromises shaped by political and economic interests.  But, as political scientist E. E. Schattschneider warned ninety years ago, once the program is enacted, it takes on a life of its own, creating its own politics. The way the program is implemented–whether it is responsive or not, transparent or not, participatory or not–shapes the citizens’ political orientation in the future, regardless of who benefits from the tender.

What can we expect from MBG to provide important lessons for global democracy?

First, the government needs to open up real opportunities for participation. For example, it could establish regular forums between parents, teachers, and kitchen managers, with decisions documented and made public. In this way, citizens can sense that their voices are being heard.

Second, food safety transparency. In this digital era, the government could create a real-time public dashboard to track food poisoning reports and follow-up actions. These cases should not simply disappear and be ignored. A quick and open response shows that the government is accountable.

The 2024 elections, like in Indonesia, produced the MBG with all its political baggage. But the MBG and school meal programs around the world are also producing something else, which is policy lessons and political learning for citizens. If implemented well, responsively, transparently, and participatively, the program can strengthen our democracy. If not, it will only deepen the skepticism and cynicism we already have too much of.

Hence, politicians must be cautious about the risks of doing nothing. The school meal programs are teaching millions of families about the state. Yet wrong messages lead to wrong lessons. The question is, what lessons do we want it to teach?