-Outlook Shillong: More than 18 years after it was rolled out in Meghalaya, the mid-day meal scheme has failed to keep children in schools or provide dietary nutrition - the two objectives of the centrally-sponsored scheme. A survey of the schools in the state where the scheme was launched in 1995 discovered that over 50 per cent children still suffered from stunted growth and that the food served is mostly deficient in...
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A Critique of The Draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014 -Amba Salelkar
-Kafila.org The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill was meant to be an enactment to codify India's obligations under the UNCRPD, which it ratified without reservations. There was a Committee set up in 2009 by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, headed by Smt. Sudha Kaul, to draft a Bill to this effect. Like the UNCRPD says, the Committee included different people with disabilities - across disabilities - to draft...
More »Compulsion by stealth-R Ramakumar
-The Hindu The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...
More »The faultlines of Birbhum -Madhuparna Das
-The Indian Express The gangrape may have brought the tribal councils of this West Bengal district to notoriety, but it wasn't the first sexual abuse on their orders. What is more at play here though is growing outside interference in a region considered a vote bank, writes Madhuparna Das. On January 29 evening, 900 people of a village in Birbhum district's Labhpur block gathered near the hut of their headman. The hut,...
More »Pay of midday meal workers doubled to Rs 2,000 a month -Akshaya Mukul
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Acceding to a long standing demand of 28 lakh cook-cum-helpers of midday meal scheme just ahead of general elections, the finance ministry has cleared the HRD ministry's proposal to double their monthly honorarium from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000. The decision will cost the government Rs 2,000 crore annually and benefit 28.29 lakh cook-cum-helpers across the country. More than 82% of cook-cum-helpers are women, 25% belong...
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