-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare) Healthcare for all, particularly for the rural areas has been a priority for the Government. The health indicators like Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR), and nutritional status of children under 3 years including prevalence of anemia amongst them and pregnant women in rural area are considerably poor as compared to urban areas. The key health indicators are as under: Public...

A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...

-Economic and Political Weekly Part-II reports the impact of in-kind food transfers on nutritional intake as measured by calories. Econometric analysis using a simple calorie demand function confirms the significance of variables relating to public distribution system access, controlling for other covariates, in its contribution to calorie intake. Results also suggest that the calorie-elasticity of PDS transfers is twice as large compared to additional out-of-pocket income equal to the cash equivalent...

-Economic and Political Weekly Taking on the argument that malnutrition in India is caused by forces that respond only partially to policy interventions, this article points out that it is important to look at the role of disease conditions - shaped by inadequate water, poor sanitation, and insufficient public health measures - in poor nutrition. Moreover, the relationship between disease and food intake is multiplicative rather than additive, and omission of...

-The Business Standard India has to come to terms with a growing obesity problem that is rapidly becoming a crisis Obesity, an epidemic often thought to be exclusive to wealthy countries, is becoming a rapidly growing crisis for India. The National Family Health Survey of 2006 revealed that roughly one in four urban Indians was overweight or obese, and several more recent studies indicate that these numbers are increasing. A new study...