-The Hindu The National Food Security Ordinance, which President Pranab Mukherjee signed into law last week, has been touted as especially attentive to the needs of women and children. A closer inspection of the Ordinance, however, suggests otherwise - its provisions in fact ignore the distinct socio-economic roles of women and children in society. Moreover, the Ordinance glosses over entire subsets of women and children, including those who are arguably the...

-The New York Times Blog The right to food is finally becoming a lively political issue in India. Aware of the forthcoming national elections in 2014, political parties are competing to demonstrate - or at least proclaim - their commitment to food security. In a country where endemic undernutrition has been accepted for too long as natural, this is a breakthrough of sorts. The rhetoric, however, is not always matched by understanding...

-Rediff.com While the Delhi and Haryana governments have declared that they are all set to roll-out the food security programme on August 20 -- Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary -- there is confusion among the chief ministers about the implementation of the ordinance which gives the right to people to receive adequate quantity of food grains at affordable prices. Anita Katyal reports. Although the ordinance has provided broad parameters that 75 per cent...

-The Telegraph Children in government and public-funded schools across India will receive a weekly tablet of iron and folic acid to reduce anaemia under a programme to be launched this week. The initiative will cover about 60 million boys and girls enrolled in Classes VI to XII at government and aided schools, a senior health official said today. It will also cover 70 million out-of-school girls, aged 10 to 19, under the Integrated...

-Live Mint For the first time, tribal communities in India will have a say in implementation of projects that affect them In the last six months, two key milestones have been reached in India around the protection of Adivasi rights. The first milestone was a ruling by Supreme Court in April which gave Adivasi communities in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa the final say on plans by a subsidiary of Vedanta...