-The Hindu The National Food Security Ordinance, which President Pranab Mukherjee signed into law last week, has been touted as especially attentive to the needs of women and children. A closer inspection of the Ordinance, however, suggests otherwise - its provisions in fact ignore the distinct socio-economic roles of women and children in society. Moreover, the Ordinance glosses over entire subsets of women and children, including those who are arguably the...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: Two books by celebrated economists have set the stage for an absorbing growth battle. Columbia University professor Jagdish Bhagwati and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen want the same end - a better India - but the means they prescribe sound different. If Bhagwati prescribes economic growth led by the markets and overseen and encouraged by liberal state policies, Sen believes growth cannot be an end in itself without government effort to...

-Live Mint For the first time, tribal communities in India will have a say in implementation of projects that affect them In the last six months, two key milestones have been reached in India around the protection of Adivasi rights. The first milestone was a ruling by Supreme Court in April which gave Adivasi communities in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa the final say on plans by a subsidiary of Vedanta...

-The Telegraph Children in government and public-funded schools across India will receive a weekly tablet of iron and folic acid to reduce anaemia under a programme to be launched this week. The initiative will cover about 60 million boys and girls enrolled in Classes VI to XII at government and aided schools, a senior health official said today. It will also cover 70 million out-of-school girls, aged 10 to 19, under the Integrated...

-The United Nations United Nations officials marked World Population Day today by spotlighting the issue of adolescent pregnancy, and calling on Governments to take measures to enable girls to make responsible life choices and realize their potential. About 16 million girls under age 18 give birth each year, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which noted that another 3.2 million undergo unsafe abortions. The vast majority - 90 per cent - of...