The NAC proposals for the food security bill are narrow and lack in vision. What is needed is a comprehensive bill with universalisation of PDS and a focus on child malnutrition.   There was much excitement when food security became one of the issues in the manifestos of most major political parties in the run up to the 2009 General Elections. With burgeoning food stocks, double-digit food inflation, stagnant malnutrition rates, declining...

Delhi NGOs initiate a process to survey the city's homeless people and reach welfare schemes to them. IN the narrow lanes of Khari Baoli, Asia's largest wholesale spice and grocery market in the crowded Old Delhi area near the Red Fort, labourers grapple with heavy sacks of grain, pulses, and so on as they load them on to wooden trolleys or unload them from trucks. There is no room for...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...

Competing for praise and popularity is as common between Ministries as are turf wars. When officers from different Ministries get the rare opportunity to meet and discuss matters of shared concern, they behave like alert soldiers who are expected to fight for every inch of territory. I had an exposure to this phenomenon while working for a Planning Commission sub-committee on vocational education for skill development. Vocational and technical training...