Scale Up Nutrition coordinates global action to root out under-nutrition. This week in New Delhi, nearly 1,000 international officials, scientists, advocates and development specialists are coming together to discuss how agriculture can be leveraged to improve nutrition and health. Nearly one-sixth of the people in our world are affected by chronic hunger. At any time, around a quarter of all children suffer from under-nutrition. Not only are they more likely to die,...

Thousands of children and women die every year in India due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Why is it that, in the Mecca of medical tourism, the poor continue to be denied the right to health? A national television channel had a 30-minute special recently on how private hospitals are denying free medical treatment to poor patients. Under a quota, private hospitals are expected to provide medical treatment...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...

The government can’t be expected to provide food, education and healthcare to all but relief would be offered to the deprived sections, Chief Justice of India SH Kapadia has said while advocating the adoption of minimum core approach. Saying that the financial meltdown has ushered in a paradigm shift from equality in terms of equal access to minimum core approach, the CJI said, “Equal access to food cannot be given. You...

Describing female foeticide as a “disgrace” to society, President Pratibha Patil has called upon the medical fraternity to ensure that diagnostic tests are not misused for pre-natal gender determination. “We have laws and legal provisions that specially prohibit medical practitioners from disclosing the gender of the foetus. It is not only illegal, but it is socially immoral and detrimental to society. It is very important that all medical facilities, doctors and...