-The Times of India MUMBAI: Over two decades after midday meals were introduced in city Schools, one out of every three children studying in a municipal School is malnourished, an RTI reply has revealed. The data showed that undernourishment of students in these Schools is accelerating with the incidence showing a four-fold jump over the last three years. In the same period, the utilization of midday meal budget fell from 81% to...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ajay Dandekar (ajay.dandekar@snu.edu.in) is a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University. Sreedeep Bhattacharya (sb514@snu.edu.in) is a fellow at the Centre of Public Affairs and Critical Theory, Shiv Nadar University. A study in two districts recording high numbers of farmer suicide—Yavatmal in Maharashtra and Sangrur in Punjab—explores the tipping point for this desperate act and finds that in addition to the shame of...

-TheWire.in Without functioning hand pumps or any government intervention, villagers are being forced to drink contaminated water, exposing them to skin infections and diseases. Bundelkhand: Bundelkhand region, which is spread over 13 districts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, has often been in the news due to acute drinking water shortage. As the heat wave intensified and the water crisis peaked in many parts of the region, I spent three days  –...

-IndiaSpend/ Business Standard In Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, fewer than 50% of rural households have electricity As many as 73% of the 18,452 villages that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government identified for electrification in 2015 now have power supply, but only 8% of these villages had all their households electrified, according to the government’s own data. As of May 25, 2017, 13,523 villages have been electrified, but 100% household connectivity...

-The Hindu Liberalisation has eroded the institutional capacity to train young people who might pursue liberal values The other day, a student asked me what exactly the word ‘liberal’ mean. She wanted to know whether ‘liberalisation’ promotes ‘liberal’ values. She had noticed that institutions of higher education, which are supposed to promote liberal values, were finding it difficult to resist ideological and commercial pressures triggered by the process of economic liberalisation. So,...