-GaonConnection.com The Indian government is considering ‘mandatory’ food fortification in the country. Several health experts have written to FSSAI calling the decision ‘a blanket approach’ to meet the complexity of malnutrition in the country. Details here. At least 170 people and organisations, including medical experts and nutritionists, have today, on August 2, written a letter to Ashok Kumar MIShra, the assistant director of Food Fortification Resource Centre, department that regulates food under...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by econoMISts from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-The Hindu Apart from PPE kits, RT-PCR tests, masks and gloves, Empowered Group later managed supply of medical oxygen The Central Information ComMISsion (CIC) has slammed the Centre’s blanket denial of information related to a committee overseeing medical oxygen supplies during the pandemic, saying its rationale was “far fetched” and “unjustified”. In its order on Saturday, Information ComMISsioner Vanaja Sarna directed the Centre to respond to the Right to Information (RTI) request...

-Scroll.in It is the second academic year when children have been out of school across India. On a grey afternoon in July, children were out on the streets in Flower Garden, a slum in the Cottonpet area of Bengaluru. A few were playing with toys, others rode their tricycles, and one stood with a racquet in hand laughing uncontrollably at something. Oviya S stood quietly outside her house, her eyebrows drawn together,...

-Newsclick.in The votaries of economic reforms MISs the point that while it may have increased GDP growth rate, it has worsened the conditions of the working people. It is 30 years since India adopted neoliberal policies in 1991, though some would date their introduction even earlier to 1985. Newspapers are full of assessments of the impact of these policies on the economy, and liberalisers from Manmohan Singh downward, have suddenly become visible,...