A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...

-Newsclick.in With sixty percent children malnourished in the state, the implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services, the largest scheme to provide nutrition to children in the country, is nothing but a sham. Sitting outside her semi-pucca house in Bilgram block, Kasturi says, "My children get five fistful of panjiri once a month from the Aanganwadi Centre." Thirty-three year-old Kasturi has never, in her parents' village or her in-law's village seen an...

-Live Mint The Indian state has done little to provide preventive public health services New data released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) have once again underlined the abysmal state of sanitation in the country, particularly in rural India where two-thirds of the country lives. Only 32% of rural households have their own toilets, according to the recently released results of a large-scale survey conducted by NSSO in 2012. An additional...

-BBC A survey done earlier this year shows that public facilities in the poorest regions of India have steadily expanded, improving the lives of people there, writes development economist Jean Dreze. Once upon a time, not so long ago, public facilities in the poorest districts of India were few and far between. Most people were left to their own devices and they lived in the shadow of hunger, insecurity and exploitation, with no...

-IIT Delhi A survey of five entitlement programmes of the government was undertaken in twenty districts of ten states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh) in May and June, 2013. The programmes covered by the survey were: Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme, Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme, Public Distribution System (PDS), National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and Social Security Pensions. The...