-The Hindu India's paradox of fast economic growth across several years and chronic malnutrition in a significant section of the population is well known. It has vast numbers of stunted children whose nutritional status is so poor that infectious diseases increase the danger of death. About 34 per cent of girls aged 15 to 19 are stunted in the country, according to a major review of global undernutrition by The...

-The Hindu Malnutrition is responsible for nearly 45 per cent of deaths in children under-five, according to new research report published as part of The Lancet Series on maternal and child nutrition. The research shows that malnutrition is responsible for around 3.1 million deaths in children under five annually. Results estimate that stunting (reduced growth) affected at least 165 million children worldwide in 2011 while at least 52 million children were affected...

-The United Nations The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today called for greater efforts to combat malnutrition and hunger worldwide as the agency launched its flagship annual report, which this year focuses on improved food systems for better nutrition. In a message marking the launch of The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), Director-General José Graziano da Silva said that although the world has registered some progress...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...