-One World South Asia The mid-day meal tragedy in Bihar has drawn attention directly to the way we articulate and work for educational entitlements, writes Parvinder Singh and Priyanka Sarkar. Lucknow: It takes an informed and empowered community to harvest the fruits of educational entitlements, including non-discriminatory access to midday meals. The promises made in the Right to Education Act can only be wrested as rights when they are owned by the...

-The Hindu Per capita entitlements under the food security bill will not cover beneficiaries as comprehensively as household entitlements The government hopes to secure in this session of Parliament, approval for the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) so that it can replace the food security ordinance. The NFSB, on which the ordinance is based, guarantees supplementary nutrition services through anganwadis for all children under six, midday meals for schoolchildren, and, very importantly, maternity...

-Outlook In the wake of the mid-day meal tragedy in Bihar, Centre has engaged the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to randomly test samples of food served as part of the scheme for quality and their protein and calorie content. In fact, the measure has already been implemented in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh and results are awaited of the first samples collected in the two states. Scientists from CSIR would be...

-The Hindu     Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...

-The Hindu Kozhikode (Kerala): The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has intervened in the problem of malnutrition deaths plaguing the tribal belts of Attappady in Palakkad district in the State. A letter written by T.K.A. Nair, Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has urged Kerala Chief Secretary E.K. Bharat Bhushan to take preventive measures to find an amicable solution to the grave problem. (As many as 54 children have reportedly died owing to...