-The Indian Express New Delhi: Eleven-year-old Vidya clearly remembers the last time she ate a midday meal at school. It was three months ago, the day school authorities discovered a lizard in the food. "She carries her own lunch ever since. On days she doesn't, I give her lunch money to eat chole-kulche outside school," her mother Sangeeta Devi says. Sangeeta Devi isn't the only parent refraining her child from eating midday...

-Live Mint ‘Give me any job... but please take me out of this hell', says 57-year-old Saraswati, a manual scavenger New Delhi: Saraswati doesn't remember the last time her bare hands touched the statues of the gods lying on a shaky wooden plank in a corner of her one-room house in Farrukhnagar village of Ghaziabad district. She doesn't remember the last time she prayed or fasted. She says every part of her body...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre and states to respond to two PILs seeking an independent probe into midday meal scheme-related deaths and alleged laxity in enforcing guidelines to ensure healthy food in the welfare scheme. The PILs - by an NGO through advocate Shobha and another by Sanjeeb Panigrahi - said they were approaching the court "in the wake of horrifying incidents of...

-The Hindustan Times Nutrition and attendance, these are the two cornerstones in the drive for the universalisation of education. And it was precisely these two reasons that the scheme to provide mid-day meals (MDM) was launched in State-run schools. This way poor children would be encouraged to attend school regularly and second, they would receive adequate nutrition. But unfortunately, as two back-to-back incidents, the first in Bihar and the second in Rajasthan,...

-Outlook Social indices topper Kerala just can't stop the baby deaths in its malnutrition-hit tribal Attapady belt Under the thick canopy of a peepal tree, beside the road that winds to Pallur Ooru in Attapady in the Western Ghats, is a small tribal burial ground. There are no tombstones to mark the graves and on closer look one sees tiny mounds where the mud has been disturbed. In a quiet corner,...