-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-FactChecker.in Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, a vegetarian, may have cultural and religious reasons for refusing to allow state schools to serve eggs in their midday meal, but his reasoning makes no nutritional sense and hobbles severely malnourished children—a fifth of all children in his state. Chauhan was quoted as saying that “milk and bananas will be served, but never eggs” to Madhya Pradesh’s 7.7 million children, beneficiaries of the...

-The Hindu The 2013 Act was supposed to have been implemented by July 5, 2014 The Centre’s resolve to rid the country of hunger will be tested with a petition being filed in the Supreme Court challenging the year-long delay in implementing the Right to Food Act and validity of three administrative directions issued by the government, postponing food and cash entitlements from reaching the poor. A petition filed by the People’s Union...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: School education secretary Vrinda Sarup today voiced concern over the reduced allocation in funds for the midday-meal programme, saying she hoped the finance ministry would restore the budget for something that has helped bring back children to school. "Dialogues are on. We hope the MDM (scheme) would be protected," Sarup told a media conference organised to present the achievements of the human resource development ministry over the past...

-The Times of India AGRA: The Uttar Pradesh mid-day meal authority's decision to extend the vital service to students of 58 drought-hit districts even during the summer vacation has hit an unlikely roadblock: teachers. This in essence jeopardizes the well-being of lakhs of school-going children in districts declared 'drought-hit' in 2014. Many of these regions also bore the brunt of unseasonal rains in March, sparking a spate of suicides. The opposition, if...