It will be a mistake to assume that the food security bill, in its present form, will necessarily and sharply reduce India’s embarrassingly high rates of child malnutrition. Satiating hunger and providing nutrients that are essential for healthy growth and fitness are not quite the same thing, a fact highlighted by the leading medical journal Lancet in a recent research paper. The article says the prevalence of anaemia in India...

-The Hindu   Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Law and Justice who had a “very frank, intense and productive” discussion with social activist Anna Hazare on the Lokpal Bill are amazed that he after, giving them an impression of being “satisfied” with the interaction, said “something else” to the media. The meeting ended with the Committee asking Team Anna to send its Jan Lokpal Bill to it for further discussion so that...

Sections within civil society have reservations about Anna Hazare’s movement but the government’s failure to tap them may have lent credence to the impression that his group was speaking up for the entire nation. Although leaders like P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal have argued that no single group could claim to be the sole representative of civil society, the Centre has not seriously tried to open channels of communication with other...

Scotching the urge to self-censor, the press must report ‘bad news’—to guard the guards, empower the citizen, and usher in change When you open a newspaper, or switch on the television, and there’s nothing but good news, it’s time to start worrying about what they’re not telling you. Nobody likes bad news, but the world is full of it. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise: they want your vote...

-PTI     TIRUCHIRAPALLI: In an effort to use human urine as fertiliser, efforts to set up the country's first Human Urine Bank have been initiated at Musiri, about 35 km from here. The initiative, a joint effort of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and Society for Community Organisation and People's Education (SCOPE), Musiri, was launched to help extraction of Struvite from urine. Struvite is a phosphate mineral that can be...