-Newsclick.in Mired by controversies and scandals, the NDA Government has now secured another rare achievement. Recent disclosures, first reported in the ‘Economist’ magazine, indicate that the government has taken great pains to suppress a survey on child health, conducted by the UNICEF, in collaboration with the Government of India. The Rapid Survey on Children (rsoc) was commissioned by the UPA Government and covers the period between 2013 and 2014. Normally the survey...

-The Hindu National averages hide State-level dynamics; SCs, STs worse off on average. New data from the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 and the UNICEF’s Rapid Survey on Children (rsoc) show that while India’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have worse socio-economic indicators, this disadvantage is varies substantially depending on the State where they live. So SC and ST children in Tamil Nadu and Kerala are less likely to be underweight...

-The Hindu Gujarat among States below national average. Despite remarkable improvements in child nutrition over the last decade in India, some States, such as Gujarat, have struggled to reduce the numbers of underweight and stunted children, new data show. Last October and November, The Hindu reported the national-level findings of the Rapid Survey on Children (rsoc), a sample survey of over one lakh households conducted by the UNICEF. Those numbers showed that both...

-The Economist The government withholds a report on nutrition that contains valuable lessons A REMARKABLE story has been unfolding in the past decade in India. A new study—conducted by the government and the UN agency for children, Unicef—offers evidence of a steady and widespread fall in malnutrition. But the picture is still grim. Judged by measures such as the prevalence of “stunting” (when children are unusually short for their age) and “wasting”...

-Tehelka The country has egg on its face but not in its diet, as the Global Hunger Index reveals acute malnutrition Swachh Bharat Mission, if implemented in a holistic fashion, holds the key to curbing not only the problem of diarrhoeal deaths for which India holds the world record, but also malnutrition. However, the World Toilet Summit, which was held in the national capital this year as part of the Mission, was...