Just when the country is getting ready to expand the Right to Food for all, the recent deaths of school children in two districts of Bihar (Chhapra and Madhubani) have raised many uncomfortable question about our standards of cleanliness, sanitation and hygiene in and around the kitchens being run under the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS). These, and many more anomalies, have been brought out by a recent report titled...

-The Indian Express Just a few days back, the Bihar Human Resource Development department was gloating over having extended the mid-day meal scheme to 591 more schools across Bihar. Two days after the worst tragedy to have hit what is India's flagship education scheme and the world's largest school nutrition programme, the department finds itself at a loss for words. While the Centre Thursday decided to constitute a monitoring committee to look...

-The United Nations   Member States kicked off a three-day meeting at the United Nations in New York today with the aim of finding ways to improve living standards and employment for the more than one billion people worldwide living with disabilities. About 80 per cent of the people with disabilities are of working age and face physical, social, economic and cultural challenge to their access to education, skills development and employment, according...

-Feministsindia.com Sharmila Rege, an extremely popular teacher and warm fellow traveler in the women's studies movement, will always be with us through her writings on caste, gender and feminism and compassion she has shown for activists and researchers I was shocked and saddened to learn about the untimely death of Sharmila Rege, on 13 July, 2013, due to cancer of colon, at the young age of 48. Prof. Sharmila Rege was an...

-The Hindu The fatal consequences of having a routine midday meal for at least 22 children in Bihar's Saran district expose the chronic neglect of school education in a large part of India. That governments cannot find a small piece of land for a school and are unable to store food materials without the risk of contamination is a telling commentary on their commitment to universal primary education. The Bihar horror...