-The Hindu Major welfare schemes have faced cuts and deductions, it says. Instead of taking bold steps to counter rising hunger following the national lockdown last year, the Union Budget has responded by introducing “cuts and deductions” and “abdicating its responsibility in ensuring social security,” the Right to Food Campaign said on Wednesday. According to an analysis, the allocations for important food and nutrition programmes such as the POSHAN (or ICDS scheme) and...

-Down to Earth UN agencies urged governments to prioritise school reopening More than 39 billion in-school MEAls were missed globally during the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic due to school closures, according to a new UNICEF report. Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 370 million children have not been receiving a school MEAl in 150 countries, said the report by UNICEF Office of Research and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)...

-Press released by Right to Food Campaign dated 3rd February, 2021 In its press release dated 3rd February, 2021, Right to Food Campaign has stated that the Union Budget 2021-22 reduced financial allocations for crucial social security schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), midday MEAls, maternity entitlements, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Please click here to access the press release. Kindly click here, here, here...

-The Indian Express While the government has failed to deliver what was promised through the main budget and subsequent mini-budgets, estimates for next year also point to missed opportunities to use fiscal MEAsures to revive the ailing economy. Expectations from Budget 2021 were high. Unsurprisingly so, for an economy battered by two years of slowdown, with a pre-pandemic annual growth rate of 4 per cent being a decadal low and the subsequent...

-The Indian Express On Monday, around 100 Twitter accounts and 150 tweets related to the farmers’ protests went off the microblogging platform as the IT Ministry directed Twitter to remove these accounts under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. From a temporary freeze on over 100 Twitter accounts seen as sympathetic to the farm protests to embedding spikes on roads, from diverting a Delhi-bound train to extending the internet ban in...