-The Telegraph She demanded that nutritional food be provided to kids below three years who don’t come to school under the Integrated Child Development Scheme New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday requested the Narendra Modi government to immediately resume the midday meal scheme, arguing that children had been the worst affected by the pandemic both in terms of education and food. Raising the matter during Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha,...

-GaonConnection.com Two years into the pandemic and the hunger and food insecurity crisis continues. A survey reported decline in nutritional quality and quantity of food despite some of the government schemes on food grains having performed well. Details here. About eight in 10 surveyed Indian households — 79 per cent — have reported some form of food insecurity during the pandemic and an alarmingly high 25 per cent reported severe food insecurity....

--Press release by the National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 29, 2022 An education emergency of unprecedented proportions has severely impacted hundreds of millions of children in India. Prolonged school closures have caused learning deprivation, student dropout, increased child labour, malnutrition, and early marriages that are compromising the future of our country. It is time to open schools and massively increase funding of public education with a clear focus...

-Press release by National Coalition on the Education Emergency (NCEE) dated January 22, 2022 Schools in Bengaluru remain closed while malls, theatres, pubs and restaurants have been kept open. As of 21 January, the weekend curfew has been lifted as well. The decision to keep schools closed is having catastrophic consequences on children. Schools had only recently started opening after remaining mostly closed since March 2020. Their being closed again spells...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...