-Deccan Herald RTI applications processed by the defence ministry in 2019-20 fell by more than 16% from the previous year’s tally   Barely two months ago, the central Government trimmed the list of security and intelligence organisations partially excluded from the RTI Act, from 26 to 25. Now, the newly created Department of Military Affairs is seeking to add the Army, Navy and the Air Force to this list, to protect national security...

-The Hindu Lower stunting among children with mothers who had access to free school lunches, shows data from 1993-2016. Girls who had access to the free lunches provided at Government schools, had children with a higher height-to-age ratio than those who did not, says a new study on the inter-generational benefits of India’s midday meal scheme published in Nature Communications this week. Using nationally representative data on cohorts of mothers and their children...

-The Telegraph The party suspects that the removal of Ravi Shankar Prasad in the cabinet shuffle could be linked to fear of a controversy erupting in the upcoming Parliament session The Congress on Saturday said the latest report by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India points to a scam in the ministry of electronics and information technology, suspecting that the removal of Ravi Shankar Prasad in the recent cabinet reshuffle could...

-Scroll.in Unless the Centre and states act swiftly, the humanitarian crisis is likely to worsen. As India witnesses a record-breaking surge of Covid-19 cases, the Central and state Governments have been scrambling to find appropriate responses to handle this health crisis. At a time when the healthcare system is severely strained, many state Governments not surprisingly have employed public health or non-pharmaceutical interventions to control the spread of the disease. These interventions...

-The Hindu The Uttar Pradesh Government should understand that evidence backs the principle of informed free choice Many of us working in the field of public health and social development have been taken aback, if not downright shocked, by the recently announced draft Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill, 2021 that focuses exclusively on making a two-child norm a law, specifying various incentives and penalties for contravention. The burgeoning negative...