-The Hindu     Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...

-The Hindu Dip in Congress' vote share from SCs, STs, Muslims - its traditional support base Cities are driving the anti-UPA sentiment, while marginalised communities - the Congress' traditional base - are more satisfied than dissatisfied with UPA-II's performance. These findings emerge from a CNN IBN-The Hindu-election tracker poll of 19,062 demographically representative respondents. Just 38 per cent of respondents expressed satisfaction with UPA-II's performance (with 22 per cent undecided), down from 49...

-The Hindu The Marrakesh draft treaty, which will allow free distribution of books in disabled-friendly formats, is not enough by itself without a wider culture of providing for accessibility in learning Last month, delegates from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to sign a draft treaty of immense value to the visually handicapped and people with diverse difficulties in accessing print. The draft treaty signed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Sunday backed Bihar's growth strategy, arguing that growth was not independent of social transformation. "What is needed is an integrated approach for development and growth," Sen said at a book release event. Citing Japan's model, which was later adopted by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the noted economist suggested that without education and proper health facilities, it was difficult...

-Economic and Political Weekly The mid-day meal programme was introduced to mitigate social inequalities inherited through the hierarchical division of society, or what is called "resilience of social structures". This structural discrimination directly impedes equal access to benefits of development by excluding the poor and marginalised. A study of the MDM programme in rural Rajasthan probes this aspect of the "resilience of social structure". In particular, the article asks under what...