-Outlook Sikkim has become the only state in the country to achieve more than 100 per cent sanitation in rural and urban households, schools, sanitary complexes and Aanganwadi centres. All 6,10,577 inhabitants in Sikkim have latrines with high sanitation and hygiene standards. The Himalayan state has constructed 98,043 individual household latrines against the target of 87,014 till January, thus achieving 112.67 per cent target under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan scheme implemented by Union Ministry...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Every JNU student may have to study a compulsory paper aimed at "sensitising" them to sexual harassment and any form of discrimination if the university accepts a suggestion an expert panel plans to push. If the university, which had set up the committee after a student was brutally attacked by her classmate last year, does make such a course compulsory, it would be the first time any...

-The Indian Express BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government is toying with the idea of introducing laddu - made of millets - in the menu of mid day meal (MDM) to add a "dash of sweetness" for the school children. It is also contemplating to add banana to the platter. At a high-level meeting here on Thursday, the addition of a sweet dish in form of millet laddu and fruit in form of banana...

-Outlook Shillong: More than 18 years after it was rolled out in Meghalaya, the mid-day meal scheme has failed to keep children in schools or provide dietary nutrition - the two objectives of the centrally-sponsored scheme. A survey of the schools in the state where the scheme was launched in 1995 discovered that over 50 per cent children still suffered from stunted growth and that the food served is mostly deficient in...

-Kafila.org The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill was meant to be an enactment to codify India's obligations under the UNCRPD, which it ratified without reservations. There was a Committee set up in 2009 by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, headed by Smt. Sudha Kaul, to draft a Bill to this effect. Like the UNCRPD says, the Committee included different people with disabilities - across disabilities - to draft...