-Financial Express It focused on the effect of food prices on child nutrition in the Andhra Pradesh, one of India’s largest states, using data from the Young Lives project based at Oxford University An international study, conducted by researchers from the Public Health Foundation of India and the University of Oxford, with a team from Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says spikes in food prices during...

-PTI WASHINGTON: India's rural employment guarantee programme MNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest public works programme, providing social security net to almost 15 per cent of the country's population, World Bank has said. India is among the five middle-income countries running the world's largest social safety net programmes, said a World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets 2015'. "The world's five largest social safety net programmes are all...

-PTI New Delhi: Auditor CAG has pointed out discrepancies in the implementation of social welfare schemes including mid-day meal (MDM) and pulled up the Delhi government for its failure to obtain fund utilisation certificates from various institutions.   The auditor also criticised the performance of the Delhi tourism and transport development corporation, saying that it has failed to formulate a perspective plan for tourism promotion in the city despite 39 years of its...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Two decades after launch, implementation of the midday meal scheme in Delhi seems to suffer from teething problems. CAG says the scheme is still not reaching all the children it's meant to cover, the meals do not meet the minimum quality requirements, the monitoring system is weak and service providers remain empanelled despite defaulting. Worryingly, some of the lacunae had been pointed out even in 2006,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Center has written to Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan governments, requesting them to consider distribution of free milk to school children as part of the ongoing Mid-Day Meal schemes -- the way Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have implemented it to raise nutritional level of children. The Center believes that the move will also help milk cooperatives, largely owned by farmers, by providing "ready and steady...