The National Advisory Council's recommendations on the National Food Security Bill are in danger of being brushed aside. It is the fate of most advisory committees that the government accepts whatever advice suits its purposes and ignores the rest. The first version of the National Advisory Council (NAC-1) managed to avoid that fate to some extent, due to favourable circumstances. NAC-1 was able to persuade the government to enact the...

The deaths of 18 lakh girl children in India in the past two decades have for the first time been linked to domestic violence against their mothers. After examining over 1.58 lakh births that took place between 1985 and 2005, an international team of researchers found that spousal violence against wives increased the risk of death among female children, but not male children, in both the first year and the first...

The Prime Minister’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges has decided to overhaul nutrition programmes in the country after a series of negative international reports about its abysmal nutrition record. The panel met for the first time recently although it had been constituted in 2008 after the country was placed below Sudan and Zimbabwe in the Global Hunger Index. The meeting, convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was attended by agriculture minister Sharad...

In recent years, the agricultural growth rate has tended to be lower than the population growth rate. This year, the former is nearing the target of 4%. But we still have a very large percentage of undernourished children, women and men. Poverty and destitution also remain stubborn. The Indian food security enigma rises from the mismatch between the grain mountains and the hungry millions. What are the prospects for ensuring...

With three small children to raise in a dirt-poor village in eastern India’s Bihar state, farm labourer Renu Devi is an unsung rural supermom who shuttles between home and field every day. But the demure 30-year-old mother does not forget to bring her children to the biannual Vitamin A rounds in Bagwanpur Rati, one of the villages in Vaishali district of Bihar. This is because Vitamin A deficiency is a major...