In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

The National Food Security Act 2013 guarantees maternity benefit to the tune of Rs. 6,000/- per child by the Central Government for pregnant women and lactating mothers, barring those who are already availing such benefits while being in regular employment with the Central Government or State Governments or Public Sector Undertakings or under other laws. The NFSA 2013 also legally guarantees free meals for every pregnant woman and lactating mother...

-The Hindu Parliamentary panel pushes for it in all government schools in coming academic year The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education has recommended that all government schools start providing free breakfast in the coming academic year, as part of an expansion of the mid-day meal scheme envisaged by the National Education Policy. However, Education Ministry officials say a severe funding crunch is likely to delay the initiative. Free breakfasts would involve an additional...

-TwoCircles.net The research highlights how the educational marginalization of Muslims in India starts at an early age itself and reveals that growth in literacy rates among Muslims is much less than among SCs/STs. Muslim children face systematic exclusion at the pre-primary level at private schools in New Delhi, the national capital of India, a new research has pointed out. The research article titled “Early Educational Marginalization for Muslim Children in India: An Analysis...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...