-The Economic Times Union Minister for Women & Child Development Maneka Gandhi wants to put an end to children consuming empty calories. Instead, she wants them to consume calories rich in nutrition, and her ministry wants to have sachets containing 600-1000 calories of nutrition for children. The plan, brainchild of Gandhi, suggests that the central government will supply the nutrients list and the state(s) can have them made. The sachet will bear...

-The Hindu As I write this column, my gaze is on the post-Deepavali haze that has enveloped Delhi. As a third-generation asthmatic, with a fourth-generation asthmatic daughter, it is set me wondering whether returning to Delhi, the city of my birth, from the United States a decade ago was a mistake. This haze is smog (smoke + fog), a hazardous mix of noxious gases and very high levels of suspended respirable...

-PTI The country’s largest prison Tihar has been asked by the Central Information Commission to develop a system of giving compensation to inmates who have been incarcerated for a duration more than their sentence period. The Commission has also directed the prison authorities to suo moto disclose the process of compensation to such prisoners as part of their obligation under the Right to Information Act. “Strangely the courts treated the MLA and the...

-Business Standard On life expectancy at birth, India fares marginally better than Pakistan New Delhi: Reacting to the terrorist strike at the army camp in Uri, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Pakistan to go to war against poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and infant mortality instead, saying let’s see who wins those wars. But a Business Standard examination of various human development indicators suggests that while currently India fares better on most key indicators,...

-The Hindu The Singur project was considered, at the time of inception, as the revival of industry in West Bengal. Singur (West Bengal): Bhaskar Kanrar and Bubai Kanrar were no more than children when their parents and uncles began the movement against forcible land acquisition for the setting up of Tata Motors’ Nano factory in Singur. Ten years later, with the Supreme Court verdict that went in favour of the protesting farmers, the...