-TheWire.in Mid-day meal cooks in Bihar – mostly women from Dalit and Adivasi communities – are subject to the worst kind of institutional gender discrimination. Patna/Jehanabad/Bhojpur (Bihar): On February 11, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi served the third billionth Akshay Patra mid-day meal in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, he said that his “government has given special focus on the nutrition of the children because a healthy childhood is the foundation of New India”. “Modiji...

-The Indian Express Both BJP’s PM Kisan and Congress’s Nyay acknowledge that small and marginal farmers and bottom 20 per cent of population have not benefited from current policies. But both schemes raise further questions. It is time to celebrate the biggest spectacle of democracy on this planet. About 900 million people are eligible to exercise their right to choose their representatives to the Lok Sabha. This festival of democracy will...

-The Indian Express The Commission said it had engaged the Indian Statistical Institute to submit a report in view of demands from political parties to increase the sample size for VVPAT slip verification from 10% to 100%. Maintaining it was in favour of continuing the existing system of random checking of VVPAT slips from one EVM per assembly segment for the Lok Sabha and assembly polls, the Election Commission has told...

-The Hindu Poor people are running from pillar to post as the Aadhaar payment bridge routinely obstructs their welfare benefits Perhaps you will remember “l’affaire Airtel” — the mass diversion of LPG subsidies to Airtel wallets that came to light in 2017. Many of the wallets were unwanted, or even unknown to the recipients. Those affected, fortunately, included millions of middle-class Airtel customers who protested when the goof-up emerged. The subsidy money...

-Economic and Political Weekly States across the country are taking steps towards providing digital identities to beneficiaries of their public distribution systems. In doing so, the use of Aadhaar-based biometrics seems to be the preferred choice of method. However, several other methods exist for the same and have been adopted by different states at different points in time. States currently embarking on the journey of providing digital identities to their beneficiaries...