-The Hindu Lower stunting among children with mothers who had access to free school lunches, shows data from 1993-2016. Girls who had access to the free lunches provided at government schools, had children with a higher height-to-age ratio than those who did not, says a new study on the inter-generational benefits of India’s midday meal scheme published in Nature Communications this week. Using nationally representative data on cohorts of mothers and their children...

-The Hindu/ PTI Charge sheets were filed in 141 cases while just six people were convicted for the offence during the period. A total of 326 cases were registered in the country under the controversial colonial-era penal law on sedition between 2014 and 2019 in which just six persons were convicted. The Supreme Court last week observed that Section 124A of the IPC — offence of sedition — has been enormously misused and...

-The Hindu Existing laws on juvenile justice, bonded labour and POCSO sufficient, say experts. The emphasis on criminalisation and policing instead of welfare measures in the new proposed anti-trafficking Bill makes it anti-migrants and anti-sex workers, warn experts. The Ministry of Women and Child Development recently placed the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2021, in the public domain and sought stakeholders' comments till July 14. The Bill is also scheduled...

-Economic and Political Weekly An argument for twin propositions is presented in this two-part paper: (i) that solving India’s water problem requires a paradigm shift in agriculture (Part I), and (ii) that the crisis in Indian agriculture cannot be resolved without a paradigm shift in water management and governance (Part II). If farming takes up 90% of India’s water and just three water-intensive crops continue to use 80% of agricultural water,...

-The Hindu Business Line Total area down 11.5 per cent; coarse cereals, oilseeds planting drops 20% With the south-west monsoon being seven per cent below normal till Friday, sowing of kharif crops continues to be affected. Data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmerss Welfare show that sowing lost its momentum further in terms of percentage. Data showed that a total of 612 lakh hectares (lh) had been covered till date compared...