The Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand welcomes the Jharkhand Government’s decision to discontinue the “DBT for food subsidy” experiment in Nagri. It is unfortunate, however, that it took almost a year of popular protests for the government to arrive at this decision. The DBT pilot caused enormous hardship to the people of Nagri, especially vulnerable groups such as single women and the elderly. Protests began within days of the experiment being...

-Economic and Political Weekly Denial of social security facilities is to blame in cases of alleged starvation deaths. The distressing news of three young girls dying of starvation in the heart of New Delhi last week raises a number of questions; not only on the failure of the state to protect its citizens from hunger 70 years after independence but also on the development model that India seems to be following. Mansi,...

-The Telegraph Hunger kills. In India, it does so with alarming frequency. Three girls aged eight, four and two died in the national capital last week; the autopsy showed that their stomach and bowels were "absolutely empty". This was in spite of the fact that the oldest girl at least went to school and should have been receiving mid-day meals. The blame, as usual, was at first apportioned to exclusion. The...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The 2018 monsoon rainfall may slip slightly below the normal threshold of 96 per cent of the average, the national weather agency indicated on Friday, but predicted that the rainfall Distribution during August and September would be "favourable" for farm operations. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted that rainfall during the second half of the four-month rainy season would be 95 per cent of the average, with a...

-Frontline.in A DETAILED report brought out recently by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Institute, titled “Primary Education in West Bengal: The Scope for Change”, highlights certain major problems that are coming in the way of the proper functioning of the primary education system in the State. While acknowledging that access to primary education has increased significantly and that there has been a perceptible improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), the...