-Live Mint The country is a happy hunting ground for communicable diseases In a Mint article last week, economist Dean Spears pointed out that the double whammy of high population density and unsanitary conditions in India stunts the growth of children, who bear a disproportionate burden of infectious diseases and lose their ability to absorb nutrients. Unless India ramps up its public health system, providing extra food will mean little for...

-Live Mint Debates on malnutrition ignore links with sanitation and disease and the burdens these impose on children Children in India are among the shortest in the world. Widespread child stunting is a human development tragedy. This is not because there is anything wrong with being short or anything inherently good about being tall. The tragedy is because of what makes children short: we all have different genetic potential heights, but...

-The Business Standard Food security should not be treated as a political ploy The government's rush to push through food security legislation as an ordinance, instead of waiting the few weeks till the next Parliament session, is disturbing. There continue to be several major problems with the food security scheme that deserve to be more thoroughly discussed at the highest level of law making than they have been so far. Nobody can...

-Kafila.org Over 115 women have signed a letter seeking an apology from Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi for her sexist slandering of deceased Ishrat Jahan in a television channel. The letter has also been sent to the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women for appropriate action. As the noose is tightening around the conspirators who cynically and coldly planned and executed the killing of teenaged Ishrat Jahan and three other people in 2004,...

-The Hindustan Times The recent release of The Lancet's special edition on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Delhi provided an occasion to debate the relevance of its recommendations for India. The discourse was enlivened by a statement, released ahead of the event by several Indian health experts, challenging the content and intent of some of the suggested interventions. Three authors of The Lancet series and many of the critics who issued that statement...