-The Hindu India's paradox of fast economic growth across several years and chronic malnutrition in a significant section of the population is well known. It has vast numbers of stunted children whose nutritional status is so poor that infectious diseases increase the danger of death. About 34 per cent of girls aged 15 to 19 are stunted in the country, according to a major review of global undernutrition by The...

-NDTV The UPA government's ambitious Food Security Bill finally seems to be getting off the ground at a whopping cost of Rs. 1.25 lakh crore. With constant disruptions by the Opposition in Parliament resulting in a delay in passing the Food Security Bill, the government has decided to not wait any longer. The cabinet will today promulgate an ordinance to push through the bill, which is the brainchild of Congress president Sonia...

-The Times of India New Delhi: The capital's growth in the last decade has overwhelmingly come from the city swallowing up Rural Areas, newly released census data shows. The number of census towns-essentially newly urbanized villages in the laldora areas-nearly doubled over the last decade, taking the proportion of Delhi's residents who live in these areas to an unprecedented third of the population. Varsha Joshi, director of census operations for Delhi, released...

-The United Nations New figures today from the United Nations educational agency show that the number of children out of school dipped slightly last year over 2011. Fifty-seven million children were out of school in 2011, according to the UN Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, down just two million from the previous year. The agency also points out that the challenge of getting more children into school is being...

-The Hindu Switching to renewable energy sources in the country's midday meal programme will save millions of rupees. But only a few kitchens are doing anything about it, says the author. This is a story of facts and figures and sheer size. Of an auditorium-sized room dense with hot steam from cooking. Of seven tonnes of cooked rice and four tanker-loads of steaming sambar that needed 70 pairs of hands for cutting...