-The Times of India Unnao, a district in Uttar Pradesh, rarely hits headlines except when its rabble-rousing MP Sakshi Maharaj says something. Now, though, it is making news for all the right reasons, and aren't the women in the region tickled pink about it. From the district magistrate to the superintendent of police, the chief development officer to the chief medical officer, from the zila panchayat president to the sub-divisional magistrate,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Health and nutrition indicators have improved, but remain unacceptably low. After a hiatus of a decade, we now have up-to-date information on the health and nutrition status of the population. Preliminary results for 13 states and two union territories of the much awaited National Family Health Survey–4 (NFHS–4) which was conducted in 2015–16—the first after NFHS–3 of 2005–06—have just been released. In a welcome development, NFHS–4, for the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-The Hindu As of 2005-06, India had 62 million stunted children, accounting for a third of the world’s burden of stunting. Indian states have seen some improvements in child nutrition over the last decade, the first official data in over a decade shows, but over one in three children is still stunted, and over one in five underweight. As of 2005-6, India had 62 million stunted children, accounting for a third of the...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...