School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-The Hindu The legal regime that enables the government to block websites needs urgent reform On February 1, 2021, in the wake of the intensification of the farmers’ protests and reports of violent incidents on January 26 – a number of Twitter accounts became inaccessible in India. These included (among many others) the accounts of The Caravan magazine, the actor Sushant Singh, and the Kisan Ekta Morcha handle, which was chronicling the...

-TheNewsMinute.com Experts say that the narrative that a country must choose between environment and development itself is wrong. Merely days after the fatal landslide in Kerala’s Pettimudi in Idukki district in August last year, the spotlight was back on the Gadgil report on the Western Ghats. The report, submitted to the government of India in 2011, had designated the Pettimudi region among the most sensitive ecological zones in the Western Ghats and...

-IdeasforIndia.in Commenting on the strong infrastructure push in the 2021-22 Budget, Sarmistha Pal argues that an emphasis on investment in infrastructure may not necessarily bring India out of the current economic recession – with the Budget’s negligence of the education sector and insufficient health expenditure, making matters worse. The 2021-22 Union Budget, announced on 1 February 2021, made a definitive turn to the right as it turned its back on providing any...

-The Hindu Major welfare schemes have faced cuts and deductions, it says. Instead of taking bold steps to counter rising hunger following the national lockdown last year, the Union Budget has responded by introducing “cuts and deductions” and “abdicating its responsibility in ensuring social security,” the Right to Food Campaign said on Wednesday. According to an analysis, the allocations for important food and nutrition programmes such as the POSHAN (or ICDS scheme) and...