-The Hindu Software, questionnaires launched. The lack of data on workers, which was evident during the COVID-19-induced lockdown in 2020, would be addressed by the five all-India labour surveys being conducted by the Labour Bureau, Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said on Thursday. Speaking at the launch of the software and questionnaires for the surveys, Mr. Gangwar said the replies given in the Lok Sabha were akin to “running away from...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-NDTV.com In February 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a speech in Parliament, ridiculed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) program as a symbol of the policy failures of the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh and, in his typical coarse style, taunted that he would bleed the program to a slow death. Exactly six years later, on February 12, 2021, Finance Minister Nirmala...

-The Hindu In a year of economic slowdown and growing inequality, we have been presented with a stingy Budget that fails to ensure the bare necessities for all While the country continues to grapple with the health and economic crisis as a result of COVID-19, widespread hunger and food insecurity is a silent emergency that has not been getting sufficient attention. Unfortunately, the Union Budget also does not include any significant measures...

-Firstpost.com The biggest hoodwink is the starved Poshan Abhiyan 2.0, which though merges the Supplementary Nutrition Programme and the Poshan Abhiyan, has been allocated an amount less than what was prescribed for Anganwadi services in 2020 In a post-truth world, the plain cold statistics in the fine print of the Union Budget 2021 often reveal more than the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's speech. The budget for NREGA labourers has been slashed despite...