-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Chhapra tragedy must ask us how we can improve public services, not scrap them altogether. In the aftermath of the ghastly tragedy in Chhapra, Bihar, where 22 children lost their lives after they consumed a government-provided school meal containing organophosphate pesticides, we must demand of the State a far greater commitment to administering large-scale welfare programmes that are meant to improve, not destroy the life of citizens....

-The Telegraph Sonia Gandhi has questioned the laxity in monitoring midday-meal quality in the wake of the deaths of over 20 children in a Bihar school. The UPA chairperson called Union human resource development (HRD) minister M.M. Pallam Raju yesterday and expressed strong displeasure over the monitoring of the programme on which the Centre spends around Rs 10,000 crore a year, a source said. She said she was saddened by the death of...

-Outlook Malnutrition, especially among children and in tribal areas, is nobody's priority 40-45 per cent of women in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh are malnourished; their babies will likely be born so. 40-45 per cent of women in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh are malnourished; their babies will likely be born so. *** What is it about the government that the starvation deaths of children don't jolt it out of its stupor?...

-The Indian Express Bihar horror must focus attention on why this powerful scheme is so patchily implemented across India Even as news broke of children succumbing to the toxins in their school midday meal in Chhapra district, Bihar, political parties snatched it for their own ends. The facts of the case have been barely comprehended, parents and teachers are in shock, but the BJP was quick to blame the Nitish Kumar government...