-The Indian Express Instead of embarking on a massive administrative exercise with uncertain benefits, it is possible to think of another combination of public interventions that would actually ensure minimum income to a much larger proportion of the population. The Congress party’s recent declaration that, if voted to power, it will seek to ensure a minimum income to 20 per cent of the poorest households in the country, is laudable in...

-The Hindu ICDS is the world’s biggest mother and child nutrition and care programme It is an early spring morning. We are walking deep inside hilly country in Karnataka’s Malnad region. When the monsoon comes, rainfall will be intense in these parts, and will continue for many months. This is coffee terrain. With the great tall trees above us, and the plantation ahead of us, we have been walking on this narrow path...

-The Indian Express Pankaja Munde’s ministry accused of tweaking tender norms to favour big players and industrialists. Mumbai: IN FRESH trouble for the Devendra Fadnavis government, the Supreme Court (SC) has struck down tenders worth Rs 6,300 crore issued in 2016 by the Maharashtra women and child development department for supplying Take Home Ration (THR) as supplementary nutrition at daycare centres or anganwadis in the state. A bench comprising Justice Arun Mishra...

-The Hindu New Delhi: anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently. The government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children and pregnant women and lactating mothers. These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal...

-The Indian Express The Indian Express has learnt that two inquiry reports into the issue, prepared by Women and Child Development Department, were allegedly riddled with falsities, prompting Sisodia to lash out at the department’s secretary over what he termed a “fraud”. New Delhi: anganwadi registers were allegedly “fudged”, pages “pulled out” and pencil records “erased” and overwritten to falsely establish that three sisters aged 8, 4 and 2, who died...