-The Hindu The Marrakesh draft treaty, which will allow free distribution of books in disabled-friendly formats, is not enough by itself without a wider culture of providing for accessibility in learning Last month, delegates from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to sign a draft treaty of immense value to the visually handicapped and people with diverse difficulties in accessing print. The draft treaty signed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation...

-Outlook Koraput (Odisha): Amid reports of students falling ill after consuming mid-day meal at schools in Dhenkanal and other districts of Odisha, tribal-dominated Koraput requires immediate steps to check the unhygienic condition in which Food is prepared. According to official reports as many as 2,14,000 students have been enrolled at the 2,757 primary schools of the district but at least 1,378 schools lack proper kitchen to prepare Food forcing the officials concerned...

-Outlook The country has achieved a record pulses production of 18.45 million tonnes (MT) in the 2012-13 crop year ended June, while Foodgrain output fell by 1.5 per cent to 255.36 MT due to drought in some states last year. The Agriculture Ministry today released the fourth advance estimates of Foodgrain production for 2012-13. Pulses output has been revised upward to record 18.45 MT in 2012-13 as compared with 18 MT in the...

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...

-The Business Standard The mid-day meal scheme cannot be blamed for the Chapra incident. It is a question of professionalising the administration and everyone doing his duty. N C Saxena, Food Commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court in the Right to Food case tells Sreelatha Menon.Edited excerpts: * Can the mid-day meal tragedy in Chapra be blamed on the decision to have separate kitchens for each school without a monitoring mechanism? The monitoring...