-The Indian Express Cash transfers instead of food has been widely debated with several criticising it for not being an actual substitute for take-home rations, which is a mix of cereals, fats, sugar and pulses, with added micronutrients. In a major policy shift, the Ministry of Woman and Child Development (WCD) has prepared a proposal to substitute take-home rations, given in aanganwadis for infants under three and pregnant and lactating mothers,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Women and child development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi today suggested spreading awareness among schoolchildren so that they can complain about sexual harassment under a central law. Maneka made the suggestions in a meeting with HRD minister Prakash Javadekar held against the backdrop of the murder of a seven-year-old boy in Gurgaon's Ryan International School. The two leaders discussed several measures, including sensitising children to file complaints under the...

-Press release from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha For the past five days, hundreds of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers and their supporters from across the country have gathered at Jantar Mantar to demand the implementation of the employment guarantee act in letter and spirit. They are demanding a substantial increase in the NREGA wages, timely payment of wages, implementation of local plans, expansion of existing entitlements and adequate budget for...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Women and Child Development ministry has written to all states and union territories that there isn't enough evidence to support the use of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic foods (RUTF) for the management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM). This is a blow to the multi-crore complex of international NGOs who push packaged food as a strategy to address severe malnutrition and companies that produce them. The WCD letter pointed...

-The Indian Express Section 375 of the IPC dealing with rape makes an exception for such instances within marriages and holds that “sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape” STATING THAT what “may appear to be marital rape” to a wife “may not appear so to others”, the central government took a stand against criminalising marital rape, in...