-The Hindu Business Line The pandemic toll on the mental health of children, including instances of PTSD, has received too little attention “I love my father, but why does he behave like this?” asks a 13-year-old from a slum in Delhi who was sexually abused during the first lockdown. She and her mother were also beaten up often. The mother, a daily wager, was compelled to take the traumatised child with her...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

Commenting on the recently released fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data for 17 states and five Union Territories (UTs) in an article published in The Indian Express (dated 6th January, 2021), Arvind Subramanian and his co-authors have stated that India has made progress on certain outcomes, including infant mortality rate (IMR), under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and neonatal mortality rate (NNMR). Relying on various rounds of NFHS data,...

-The Hindu Hyderabad-based Balamitra Foundation’s project of distributing menstrual hygiene kits in Andhra’s Billalavalasa village has started conversations on a topic often brushed under the carpet When Sravani got her first period, she had no idea how to manage the bleeding since nobody had spoken about it to her. Even her mother was hush-hush about it. She ended up using cloth and missing a week’s class at school. Several girls like her...

-The Hindu Serious efforts must be made to deter sex selective abortion and infanticide Few things cast a long shadow on human failing as much as sex selection does. To choose on the basis of gender and eliminate new life if the gender is not ‘favourable’ can easily be among humanity’s worst moments. Last week’s case of infanticide in Tamil Nadu’s Usilampatti, historically notorious for its crude methods of killing female babies,...