-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

-The Hindu Boards are understaffed, have little time for meetings, inspection or regulation, says study Mumbai: Environmental protection seems to be in shaky hands with political appointees nominated to head state pollution control boards (SPCB) in some places. In one case, the educational qualification of the chairperson was tenth standard. In Karnataka, for instance, the chairperson of the SPCB is Vaman Acharya, a senior BJP leader. In Himachal Pradesh, it is Kuldip Singh...

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...

-The Telegraph Sonia Gandhi has questioned the laxity in Monitoring midday-meal quality in the wake of the deaths of over 20 children in a Bihar school. The UPA chairperson called Union human resource development (HRD) minister M.M. Pallam Raju yesterday and expressed strong displeasure over the Monitoring of the programme on which the Centre spends around Rs 10,000 crore a year, a source said. She said she was saddened by the death of...

-The Business Standard The mid-day meal scheme cannot be blamed for the Chapra incident. It is a question of professionalising the administration and everyone doing his duty. N C Saxena, Food Commissioner appointed by the Supreme Court in the Right to Food case tells Sreelatha Menon.Edited excerpts: * Can the mid-day meal tragedy in Chapra be blamed on the decision to have separate kitchens for each school without a Monitoring mechanism? The Monitoring...