-The United Nations Violence against children often goes unseen, unheard and unreported the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today, launching a new initiative urging the international community to speak out more forcefully against the scourge, which leaves millions of girls and boys physically and emotionally scarred every year. "In every country, in every culture, there is violence against children," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "Whenever and wherever children are harmed,...

-The Indian Express No magic pill solution or quick fix can make up for basic administrative deficiencies In a review of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen's latest book in the Financial Times (July 12, 2013), historian Ramachandra Guha questions whether the Indian state is "up to the job of doing more to tackle poverty". Mainstream debates about the persistence of poverty and pervasive failures in public service delivery in India tend to...

-The Times of India Amartya Sen is angry, and clearly getting impatient . Having urged Indian policymakers over decades to do more to combat poverty, hunger and illiteracy , the economist is now taking direct aim at what he feels is our continuing apathy as a nation towards the underprivileged. But in his own way - less the firebrand rhetorician and more the gentle but firm academic don that he is....

-The Hindu     Women are essential for the success of schemes like the mid-day meal programme. Improving their wages and working conditions would be better than blaming them when things go wrong. Mahatma Gandhi once declared, "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." By this yardstick, India does not fare well. Consider recent headlines alone: 23 Bihari children die after eating poisoned midday meals at their schools. Six-year-old...

-The Business Standard The tragedy involving the death of children in a Bihar school should reinforce recent efforts to improve the programme, notes Amarjeet Sinha. The sad loss of 23 innocent lives after consuming hot cooked meals in a school in Bihar has rightly shocked and angered people. The highly poisonous pesticide monocrotophos found in children's food and a headmistress overlooking the cook and the children's protests about the oil and not...