-The Hindu Governments can provide direct cash transfers while creating conditions for employment With the Congress promising through the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) scheme ?6,000 every month to the poorest 20% of households if voted to power, Mahendra Dev and Pronab Sen talk of the importance and problems of direct cash transfers. Providing social protection is important even as governments try to create conditions for income-generating activities, they say in a discussion...

-Hindustan Times Farming must become sustainable since agriculturists are struggling to build resilience against many threats I spent international women’s day in Mangalagiri, in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, with Usha Rani. As a single mother for 17 years, she has raised two children (now in second-year college and in high school). Three years ago, she switched to natural farming. On less than half an acre, she practises multicropping, growing maize, banana,...

-ThePrint.in The priorities listed by Rahul Gandhi are arguably the issues India should focus on: poverty, farm distress, unemployment, Health and the sense of fear. The launch of the Congress’s manifesto Tuesday marked a missed opportunity in this historic Lok Sabha election. Not because this manifesto is a bad document. As far as manifestos of mainstream parties go, this one is more cogent and thought-through than the run-of-the-mill documents. Congress president Rahul...

-The Hindu Bengaluru researchers say that animal product protein is better digested Chennai: About 38% of children in India below the age of five years are stunted. Research suggests that the reason for this is that young children consume mainly cereal-based food, which lacks quality protein that can be well digested and is limited in the content of certain essential amino acids such as lysine. Researchers at St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru measured...

-TheWire.in Mid-day meal cooks in Bihar – mostly women from Dalit and Adivasi communities – are subject to the worst kind of institutional gender discrimination. Patna/Jehanabad/Bhojpur (Bihar): On February 11, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi served the third billionth Akshay Patra mid-day meal in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, he said that his “government has given special focus on the nutrition of the children because a Healthy childhood is the foundation of New India”. “Modiji...