-The Telegraph Hazaribagh: A 40-year-old mother of two died of starvation at Hazaribagh Sadar Hospital this morning, two days after her daughter died of the same reason at their village home 7km from district headquarters, in a country where National Food Security Bill, 2013, received Presidential assent on September 10. Despite so-called safety nets - existing flagship welfare provisions such as BPL card, MGNREGS and a host of other subsidy, pension, assistance,...

-The Economic Times Recently, we were witness to a noisy spat between economists Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati. Some commentators linked this to a Congress-versus-BJP fight over development models. Sen, the advocate of investment in education, health and nutrition as necessary for economic growth, was presumed to speak for the Congress. Bhagwati, the proponent of growthfirst model, was seen to be batting for the BJP. Indeed, Bhagwati has cited Gujarat as...

-The Hindu Meals low on calories and proteins, says Review Mission Hyderabad: Food quantities served under Mid-day Meals scheme in the State's schools are way below the norms prescribed, going by the findings of the Fifth Joint Review Mission to Andhra Pradesh. According to the Mission's report after its visit to Hyderabad and Medak between June 24 and July 3, the gap between the norms and actuals is more in the case of...

-The Times of India Amartya Sen is angry, and clearly getting impatient . Having urged Indian policymakers over decades to do more to combat poverty, hunger and illiteracy , the economist is now taking direct aim at what he feels is our continuing apathy as a nation towards the underprivileged. But in his own way - less the firebrand rhetorician and more the gentle but firm academic don that he is....

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...