-GovernanceNow.com Hamlets in four states show how community efforts can combat malnutrition among children. Funds for the initiative, however, are drying up As the trees and bushes give way to Bada Doomartoli, a hamlet of Singhpur village in Nagri block of Ranchi, one can see a bunch of children running around playfully in the verandah of the first house. Their screeching can be heard from a distance. The younger children sit...

-Hindustan Times A Dalit scholar at the University of Hyderabad killed himself on Sunday night, nearly two weeks after he and four other students were suspended by authorities and thrown out of the hostel, triggering charges of casteism. The students were on a protest strike in front of the hostel since the expulsion that followed an argument and scuffle between members of some campus groups and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. That strike has...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Hindu The National Food Security Act is finally making headway in the poorest States. Amplified by reforms in the Public Distribution System, a modicum of nutritional support and economic security to all vulnerable households is now a real possibility. Dhobargram is a small Santhal village in Bankura district of West Bengal, with 100 households or so. Most of them are poor, or even very poor, by any plausible standard. There are...

-TheWire.in India’s midday meal scheme (MDMS) reaches more than 11 crore children across 12 lakh government schools around the country. Based on a Supreme Court order in 2001, states introduced a cooked meal in schools – replacing the earlier system of monthly “dry rations”. Despite many achievements, the scheme tends to make headlines for the wrong reasons. A recent audit report by the CAG found a number of implementation gaps, including...