-PTI NEW DELHI: To boost research and innovation, 12 states will receive Rs 120 crore each under Rashtriya Uchchatara Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) programme which seeks to improve quality of higher education. The funds, sanctioned under the research, innovation and quality improvement component, will support research programmes like base research, key technology (R&D), high-end (R&D), etc during the current Five Year Plan. The innovative programmes will be funded as per the decision of RUSA's...

-Newsclick.in Recent studies have shown that even as India fares better than many developing regions of the world on several indicators of growth and development such as GDP, per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, etc., the number of malnourished children in India is significantly high. What explains this paradox? The Union Cabinet recently approved a multi-sectoral nutritional programme proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to reduce...

-The Business Standard The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows are being pampered with funds to serve for just two years   The Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows scheme, announced two years ago, sounded like a novel way to connect educated youth to the problems of backward rural areas hit by Maoist violence. But it is now surrounded by questions as its financial size is now larger than the problem it seeks to solve...

-Down to Earth   This defies logic. Despite rapid economic growth, India has often been placed below sub-Saharan African countries that have very high number of malnourished children. But the government has no data to clarify its position. In the first week of September, Parliament’s Committee on Estimates criticised the government, saying: “The committee is surprised to note that in the modern era of Information and Technology, there is no recent official...

-IPS News UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2013 (IPS) - Reducing the proportion of undernourished people by half until 2015 was one of the Millennium Development Goals that the international community set in 2000. It will not be reached: At least 870 million people worldwide - and one child in five - still go hungry; this in a world where we already produce enough food today to feed nine billion people in...