-The Indian Express Bhubaneswar : Aiming to reach the poorest of poor, the Naveen Patnaik government on Tuesday started Palli Sabhas and Gram Sabhas in 48,000 villages under 6,236 gram panchayats through which several developmental projects and schemes such as NREGS, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan and old age pension would be executed. The programme termed “Gram Sabha Shashaktikaran Karyakrama” would continue till October 18 and give the grampanchayats a say in selecting the...

-The United Nations High-level political and private sector officials today met in New York to fight childhood and maternal under-nutrition with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praising the progress made so far, while stressing the importance of continuing to boost efforts on this front. “Every household needs to be able to afford safe, nutritious foods. Markets need to be open and fair. The poorest people need to know they can count on social protection...

-The Telegraph The Centre has issued a directive asking officials to seek only the minimum number of documents required for claiming family pension following complaints of unnecessary harassment. In a memorandum issued last week, the department of pension and pensioners’ welfare asked all central government ministries and departments to “strictly” adhere to instructions so that relatives of deceased pensioners are not put through “any hardships”. From the “representations received in this department it...

-The Times of India BANGALORE: Competitive parenting has reached a new level, with parents taking the RTI route to lay their hands on the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (Class 10th) answer scripts of their kid's classmates. The Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board, which conducts the exam for over eight lakh students every year, is in a fix. Following a spike in such applications, it has written to the Karnataka government seeking...

-Frontline Thanks to the Bombay High Court, interventions to tackle the decades-long problem of malnutrition among children in the Melghat area of eastern Maharashtra could be better managed. The court has directed the State government to track children and mothers using a management information system (MIS). The court’s directive came on a petition filed on July 20 by an Amravati-based NGO, Khoj, regarding the abysmal conditions in the Melghat region that were...