-Deccan Herald Children to get foodgrain, cooking cost as per FSA New Delhi: Schoolchildren may soon be entitled to supply of foodgrain along with cooking cost in case the midday meal is not served, with the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry finalising modalities for giving them food security allowance, mandatory under the Food Security Act. At a national level consultation held by the ministry in Meghalaya recently on preparation of rules for granting...

-Scroll.in They're very nutritious, have a relative long shelf-life and could boost rural employment. Last week, the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan rejected a proposal to introduce eggs on the menu of the Integrated Child Development Services scheme – even just on a trial basis in three tribal districts. This short primer responds to some of the questions being asked about whether and why we need eggs on the menu...

-The Indian Express To improve the educational status of Scheduled Castes, a fresh understanding of their achievements and challenges is necessary. The concern of scholars, planners and policymakers has been to achieve the goals set in our Constitution: equality, justice and equal opportunity for all. However, in the period after Independence, it was revealed that education was not necessarily linked to social and economic development and the majority of Indians continued...

-The Indian Express Child nutrition is being held hostage to spurious, largely upper caste, arguments Child nutrition is prime-time news only when a tragedy occurs. Child undernutrition is no less a tragedy but rarely recognised as such. Attention to it, following the Madhya Pradesh chief minister’s rejection of a proposal to introduce eggs in anganwadis is significant and welcome. Few people realise food intake in India is very poor. According to the 2005-06...

-FactChecker.in Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, a vegetarian, may have cultural and religious reasons for refusing to allow state schools to serve eggs in their midday meal, but his reasoning makes no nutritional sense and hobbles severely malnourished children—a fifth of all children in his state. Chauhan was quoted as saying that “milk and bananas will be served, but never eggs” to Madhya Pradesh’s 7.7 million children, beneficiaries of the...