-The Hindu India accounts for the largest number of deaths of infants primarily because it has failed to provide them and their mothers access to critical health care India loses 4,200 children under the age of five every day. This figure is certainly unacceptable for any emerging country. The collective ache of losing so many newborns is worsened by the realisation that many of these deaths are preventable. The country accounts for nearly...

-The Indian Express Even as Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s Union Budget for 2013-14 is being touted as a ‘balanced’ budget, members of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) have criticised it for not having done enough for the social sector. They feel the budget, which comes just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due next year, falls short on delivering to the less advantaged groups and is relatively...

-Economic and Political Weekly The proposed legislation on the National Food Security Act has been steadily watered down since it was fi rst mooted in 2009. The Parliamentary Standing Committee that examined the 2011 Bill has disappointingly continued with "targeting". If the government passes the bill incorporating the committee's suggestions, a historic opportunity to combat hunger and malnutrition would be lost. Ankita Aggarwal (aggarwal.ankita87@gmail.com) is a Research Scholar at the Centre for...

-Hard News Media Despite the high economic growth, India has the highest proportion of malnourished children in the world. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and others gathered at IIT Delhi to discuss the Food Security Bill The jam packed Dogra auditorium of IIT Delhi was a testimony to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s popularity amongst students, teachers, activists, economists, among others who had congregated to hear him talk on the...

-The Hindu Effective spending, reworking the affiliation system and breaking academic bureaucracy are key to better universities Although Indian higher education suffers from many dysfunctionalities and the system overall is characterised by “pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity”, it does reasonably well by some international comparisons. Here are a few examples: — India is a global leader in terms of GDP spent by public and private sources on higher education. India...