The Right to Food Campaign on Tuesday expressed its disappointment with the “narrow manner'' in which the proposed food security Bill was being formulated and sought a public debate on the subject. They resolved to intensify their efforts to secure a legal right to food and nutrition for all. At a meeting with Union Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, a delegation of activists said the proposal to provide 25 kg...

The efforts to reduce child Malnutrition in Chhattisgarh have hit a roadblock. The state has partially rolled back its policy of decentralized food provisioning in the Integrated Child Development Services (icds), the key programme for reducing Malnutrition amongst pre-school children. The National Family Health Survey (nfhs) shows that 47 per cent of children in Chhattisgarh are underweight, putting it along with Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Meghalaya, among the top...

If you want to understand why the Maoists grow stronger, watch frail Shyam Charan Kisku, 5, as he keeps hunger away by nibbling at a wild berry called Kendu on a hot April afternoon. Kisku and 40-odd children in this scraggly village of mud-and-thatch homes, 180km south-east of Jharkhand’s capital Ranchi, did not get their free lunch this day under the national mid-day meal scheme, the world’s largest cooked-meal programme. Kisku’s mother,...

By the end of the third day (i.e. 11th April, 2010) of the The Independent People’s Tribunal that took place at Constitutional Club between 9 and 11 April, 2010, Retired Supreme Court judge Justice Sawant, while concluding, said that participatory democracy has been lacking in India. Democracy can never be equated with elections only. The jury during the 3-day long People’s Tribunal heard the testimonies of a large number of...

Supreme Court appointed commissioners have asked Jharkhand government to set up an enquiry commission to probe reports of hunger deaths in the state that has all along refuted such occurences. As many as 26 Malnutrition deaths were reported from the state in 2008 and 2009. But the state government maintained the reasons behind the deaths weren’t related to hunger. Now, the office of the Commissioners of the Supreme Court (Right to Food),...