-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A close scrutiny of the accounts of the Bihar government shouldn't surprise you about the midday meal (MDM) tragedy that claimed the lives of more than 20 children last week. To make matters worse, there were serious infrastructure inadequacies in government hospitals meant to treat children who had taken ill. The level of Bihar government's lethargy and callousness is far more serious than what is known...

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Sunday backed Bihar's growth strategy, arguing that growth was not independent of social transformation. "What is needed is an integrated approach for development and growth," Sen said at a book release event. Citing Japan's model, which was later adopted by South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the noted economist suggested that without education and proper health facilities, it was difficult...

-Economic and Political Weekly The mid-day meal programme was introduced to mitigate social inequalities inherited through the hierarchical division of society, or what is called "resilience of social structures". This structural discrimination directly impedes equal Access to benefits of development by excluding the poor and marginalised. A study of the MDM programme in rural Rajasthan probes this aspect of the "resilience of social structure". In particular, the article asks under what...

-The Hindu Social audits of the mid-day meal scheme by parents can ensure that the world's largest intervention against hunger that also helps keep children in school need not suffer setbacks like the Bihar tragedy This week, 23 children lost their lives after having a mid-day meal served at a school in Bihar's Saran district. Preliminary reports suggest that the school lacked a storage facility for foodgrain which led to contamination and...