-IndiaSpend.com The guidelines of the restructured scheme, Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0, are still being worked out and POSHAN 2.0 has not yet been approved, an RTI response revealed New Delhi: In 2021, the government consolidated several programmes for children, adolescent girls and creches, supplementary nutrition and POSHAN (Prime Minister's Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment) into an umbrella programme called Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0. But there is confusion over the objectives...

--Press release by the National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 29, 2022 An education emergency of unprecedented proportions has severely impacted hundreds of millions of children in India. Prolonged school closures have caused learning deprivation, student dropout, increased child labour, malnutrition, and early marriages that are compromising the future of our country. It is time to open schools and massively increase funding of public education with a clear focus...

-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...

-The Hindu With most of India’s livestock in rural and remote areas, a game changer now will be the use of mobile veterinary units The twentieth livestock census indicated that India today has a livestock population of approximately 537 million; of this, 95.8% is concentrated in rural areas. Given the fact that most of the country’s livestock is in rural and remote areas, access to veterinary services is a major challenge. Livestock...