-The Telegraph New Delhi: A pilot study on the midday meal scheme has recommended splitting it into light snacks and a light meal because it found that 70 per cent children in government schools were coming to class on an empty stomach and failing to focus on studies. The study, conducted by the NGO Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute in the Sohawal and Masauda blocks of Faizabad district in Uttar Pradesh, reported that...

-The Hindu Inducting Licentiate Medical Practitioners may be the solution to the chronic shortage of doctors in rural areas Nearly 600 million people in India, mostly in the rural areas, have little or no access to health care. A widespread disregard for norms, a perpetual failure to reach targets, and an air of utter helplessness are what mark the state of rural health care today. One can add to this another...

-TheWire.in A new UN study also notes that the intersection of gender with other forms of discrimination – caste, race/ethnicity, religion etc – is what further marginalises women and girls from poor and deprived sections of the society. New Delhi: Not only are women poorer, more hungry and more discriminated against than men in India, but the average Dalit woman in the country also dies 14.6 years younger than those from higher...

-Frontline.in Despite its deeply flawed neoliberal perspective, Economic Survey 2017-18 is rich in detail, has many useful analytical discussions at different levels of aggregation, and would serve as a useful resource for students and scholars. When Arvind Subramanian, the present Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance who took office way back in October 2014, presented his first Economic Survey, the one for 2014-15, there was considerable novelty on offer, at...

-TheWire.in The making of the Union Budget has been a far too secretive and hidden exercise. Social sector expenditure and allocations related to policy announcements should be matters of open ongoing debate. On December 20, 2017, a group of 60 eminent economists sent an open letter to the finance minister stating: “We are writing to draw your attention to two urgent priorities for the forthcoming budget.” The first was to increase the central...