-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: A technical committee appointed by the Supreme Court (SC) has recommended an indefinite moratorium on open field trials of genetically-modified (GM) crops till the deficiencies in the regulatory and safety systems are effectively addressed. The recommendations, if accepted by the court, would have a serious impact on the commercialisation of GM crops. In its final report, which was submitted to the court last week, the six-member...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...

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...

-Outlook Koraput (Odisha): Amid reports of students falling ill after consuming mid-day meal at schools in Dhenkanal and other districts of Odisha, tribal-dominated Koraput requires immediate steps to check the unhygienic condition in which food is prepared. According to official reports as many as 2,14,000 students have been enrolled at the 2,757 primary schools of the district but at least 1,378 schools lack proper kitchen to prepare food forcing the officials concerned...

-The Times of India I grew up in Patna but the place where I learned to ride a bicycle was Chaibasa. My seventh birthday passed unnoticed because my maternal grandmother had died the previous week, but my parents relented and bought me the promised bicycle. Yesterday, I went back to Chaibasa after more than 40 years. My father was a civil servant who had served for many years in what is now...