-The Times of India The Parliament's monsoon session is only about a month away. That the Union cabinet has yet taken the ordinance route to implement the national food security Bill signals the scam-tainted UPA government's desperation to woo voters before the next general elections. But the hope that expanding what is already one of the world's largest food security programmes will boost political fortunes is hallucinatory. The exchequer is already...

-The Hindu     Ignou's dual talk leaves students in the lurch Nobody would have thought that in less than two years of setting up of the first Indian Sign Language Research & Training Centre (ISLRTC) for the hearing-impaired, plans would be afoot to shut it down. But that is what seems to be happening at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) campus here. Vice-Chancellor M. Aslam categorically told The Hindu that there was...

-The Hindustan Times The recent release of The Lancet's special edition on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Delhi provided an occasion to debate the relevance of its recommendations for India. The discourse was enlivened by a statement, released ahead of the event by several Indian health experts, challenging the content and intent of some of the suggested interventions. Three authors of The Lancet series and many of the critics who issued that statement...

-The Hindu     The Kerala government has not learnt anything from the Attappady tragedy. Nutrition levels of women and children, most of them tribals, continue to remain dismal in the area At the Agali Community Health Centre in Attappady, Palakkad district, Kerala, Kavitha tends to her four-year-old child lying listlessly on the cot, critically ill. The doctor says the child is severely malnourished. He also says there are eight such infants and children,...

-The Hindu Kochi: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who recently received an award from the United Nations on behalf of the Chief Minister's office, was actually nominated for the award by his own government. The rules of nomination for the United Nations Public Service Award clearly state that self-nominations - "when the institution being nominated and the institution making the nomination are the same" - are not accepted. But the Chief Minister's staff...