-DNA Taking up the gauntlet against alarming malnutrition in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research has announced a new comprehensive national nutrition survey, unlike any done before. This survey aims to unite the efforts and data of all scattered surveys that have happened in the country, the Rapid Action Survey of Children (RSoC), the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) for example,and bring on board as equal stakeholders the union ministries of...

Although there is sufficient data and evidence available in the public domain to argue whether there has been halving of poverty between 1990 and 2015, the same cannot be said with conviction about the halving of hunger—one of the targets set under the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals framework (replaced recently by SDGs). This is because the recently released data by the National Family Health Survey-4 (conducted in 2015-16) and the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-Scroll.in Institutions that provide cheap or free meals are not mere populism – they are vital for the food security of people on the margins. My first experience of a “community kitchen” was in Brazil where we were taken to try out a meal at the Popular Restaurant in Lauros de Freitas. The serpentine queue outside it surprising initially, seemed entirely unexceptional once we had been served: for one real (approximately Rs...

-The Hindu Maternity entitlements are an important policy tool for encouraging better maternal health. This is why we need to do away with conditionality in cash transfer schemes Since the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed in 2013, policy circles have been buzzing with talk of reforms in the public distribution system (PDS). Less well appreciated is the NFSA’s potential to call attention to, and help address, poor maternal nutrition — an aspect...