-DNA Taking up the gauntlet against alarming malnutrition in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research has announced a new comprehensive national nutrition survey, unlike any done before. This survey aims to unite the efforts and data of all scattered surveys that have happened in the country, the Rapid Action Survey of Children (RSoC), the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) for example,and bring on board as equal stakeholders the union ministries of...

-The Hindu Forty years after being established with a mandate to generate data on the nutritional status of socially vulnerable groups, the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) has been shut down by the Union Health Ministry. The bureau, under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), had been critical in informing the government’s poverty alleviation interventions with periodic assessments of nutrient deficiency among tribal communities, pregnant women, adolescents and “at-risk” elderly population...

-Live Mint   In Gujarat public funds are committed to supporting private investment. This does not benefit the poor Amidst the clamour of India's colourful 2014 general election, a public debate of great import for India's future is underway. Leading political candidates debate which development model is best suited for a country of vast economic potential and embedded historical impoverishment. Most opinion polls rate Narendra Modi as the front-runner in the 2014 general election....

A new report by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) reveals that despite the nutritional value of millets, otherwise known as coarse cereals*, there has been a drastic reduction in the area under its cultivation from 36.34 million hectares in 1955-56 to 18.6 million hectares in 2011-12 thanks to the wrong agricultural and price policies adopted by the Government (see table 1, and the links below). Based on previous National...

-Down to Earth Prevalence of underweight children down from 76 to 43 per cent for boys, 74 to 42 per cent for girls over past four decades, says National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau Food intake of people in rural India has been declining over the past four decades, but the status of nutrition among children has improved over this period. This was revealed in third repeat survey by National Nutrition Monitoring...