-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: After its plan to penalise journalists identified as purveyors of fake news was nixed by the PMO, the I&B ministry has now decided to set up a social media communication hub and deploy executives to monitor online content across each of India’s 716 districts. The monitoring mechanism, once in place, will be able to read, contextualise and respond to content in most Indian and foreign languages...

-The Hindu This is the first time that the Central government has laid down guidelines for labelling genetically modified food All packaged food with at least 5% content from genetically engineered sources need to be labelled so. Moreover, foods that exceed norms of sugar and fat should carry ‘red’ and ‘green’ labels specifying the extent to which they do so, according to draft regulations by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of...

-The Hindu ‘Commercial release of the seed is a socio-political issue’ “The commercial release of genetically modified mustard wasn’t merely a scientific issue but a ‘socio-political one’ that required the understanding of a wide section of society,” K. VijayRaghavan, 64, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) said in an interview. He was formerly Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, that had funded the development of the seed. While the transgenic plant has been cleared for commercial cultivation...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday set in motion an attempt to get the budget passed without discussion in a paralysed Parliament through a process known as the guillotine. Once the guillotine is applied, all outstanding demands for grants from various departments will be put to vote at once whether they are discussed or not. With protests aborting all business in both Houses since the session started on March 5, the...