-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...

-PTI About 58.8 per cent of households in Maharashtra have TV sets while 13.3 per cent have computer/laptop and 69.1 per cent have telephone/mobile in their households, as per the data on "housing, amenities and assets" in the 2011 census. The respective figures at national level are 47.2, 9.5 and 63.2 per cent, Ranjit Singh Deol, director Census operations, Maharashtra, told reporters in Mumbai. The share of households having two wheelers is 24.9...

Nine gram sewaks have committed suicide in past one year due to work stress Gram sewaks in Maharashtra have refused to give in to the high-handedness of the administration for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) so that it can be projected as a success. Instead, they have decided to approach the high court to press for their demands like formation of a separate independent agency for the...

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance finds the UID project to be “conceptualised with no clarity” and “directionless”. THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has dealt a body blow to the Unique Identification (UID) project. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up under the Planning Commission by an executive order on January 28, 2009. The scheme involves the collection of demographic and biometric information to issue ID numbers to...

According to the Maharashtra government's own figures, 18,486 children in the age group of 0-6 years have died of malnutrition this year alone (Jan-August 2011). The figure is quite high, say health ministry sources. In 2010, 12,792 children had died of hunger and malnutrition during the same period. But this year, 5,694 more babies than last year have starved to death. Most of the dead babies are adivasi children. The...