-Economic and Political Weekly   Chhattisgarh's public distribution system reforms have been lauded as a model for the National Food Security Act, and as one that other states can emulate. Previous research has shown that PDS rice consumption increased in Chhattisgarh following reforms by the Raman Singh government, which began in 2004. However, one-third of PDS rice consumption growth in Chhattisgarh took place before 2004. This finding suggests that the pre-2004 reforms...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Children in West Bengal and Bangladesh are presumed to share the same distribution of genetic height potential. In West Bengal they are richer, on average, and are therefore slightly taller. However, when wealth is held constant, children in Bangladesh are taller. This gap can be fully accounted for by differences in open defecation, and especially by open defecation in combination with differences in women's status and maternal...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Mid-Day Meal Scheme is the world's biggest school lunch programme and is being implemented all over India for primary and upper primary school students. However, nutrition and hygiene are now among the main challenges it faces. Out of 876 test reports of mid-day meal samples in Delhi from 1 January 2012 to 31 March 2013, more than 90% failed to meet the standard of 12 gms...

-Economic and Political Weekly This article re-estimates the prevalence of child malnutrition among the under-five age group in eight north-east states using the composite index of anthropometric failure method as proposed by P Svedberg, using the National Family Health Survey-3 data. These data show that in the north-east only about 35% of children under-five are underweight. However, results using the CIAF method indicate a substantially higher malnutrition level of 56%, and...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Right to Information mechanism is sought to be diluted by certain bodies by the arbitrary use of pre-existing procedures and rules which were enacted at a time when citizens' right to information had little or no consequence. These rules also lack procedural safeguards and have onerous fees devoid of any reasonableness. The aggrieved citizen had no choice but to approach the courts. This trend must be...