-TheWire.in From rotten vegetables to frogs, the MDM in Uttar Pradesh has featured several unlikely ingredients. In a village in Chitrakoot district, while insects were the latest buzz, a severe dose of apathy appears to be the real cause of alarm. Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh: The website of the Uttar Pradesh Mid-Day Meal Authority (MDMA) proudly boasts of having won a gold trophy in “e-governance” for its innovative use of technology in...

-The Indian Express Many BJP-ruled states deny children a food choice that could address malnutrition Two of every five Indian children are stunted. Eggs are nutrition-dense superfoods packed with proteins and essential vitamins. Washington University researchers, for example, have demonstrated with a randomized control trial that feeding infants eggs daily decreased stunted growth by almost half and underweight by three-quarters. Berkeley researchers have also validated that healthy school meals even improve test...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar has reportedly struck down a proposal to increase from a paltry Rs 1,000 a month the honorarium for cooks-cum-helpers preparing midday meals. A cabinet note moved recently seeking extension of the scheme for three years from 2017 is silent on any increase in the wage of the 25 lakh workers, most of whom are single women or widows. A note prepared by officials...

-The Hindu An estimated 10 million people in nine districts of West Bengal drink arsenic-laden groundwater. Priyanka Pulla finds that despite alarms having been sounded over decades, the State government has moved at a glacial pace to tackle the crisis, while people struggle to cope with the symptoms On a Thursday morning at the government primary school in Madhusudankati, a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, a gaggle of five-year-olds...

-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and Solidarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...