-FAO September’s post-2015 development agenda summit of heads of state and government may well attract global headlines this year, but much of the really significant work is being executed behind the scenes. As statisticians lock heads to come up with a workable indicator framework to measure and monitor the ambitious Agenda, Vikas Rawal, Associate Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, describes the make-up...

-Hindustan Times A nutrition plan within the National Food Security Act meant for pregnant women and lactating mothers, a vulnerable group that skews India’s hunger indices, looks quietly buried. It still runs as a trial in 52 districts, two years after the landmark legislation was signed into law. The Centre hasn’t yet begun budgeting for it to expand the maternal health scheme to cover the whole country. While a parallel scheme under...

-IPS News NIYAMGIRI: As the rhythmic thumping of dancing feet reaches a crescendo, the women offer a song to their forest god for a bountiful harvest. Then, with earthen pots on their heads and their spiritual creatures – a pigeon and a hen – in tow, they proceed in single file on a long march away from their village of Kadaraguma, located on the Niyamgiri mountain range in the Rayagada District of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: For 10 months, the Narendra Modi administration withheld from the public the findings of a study by India's government and Unicef that charts "unprecedented" improvement in child Malnutrition over the past decade but shows Gujarat in an unflattering light. Under pressure after The Economist reported the findings a fortnight ago, the government last week released the national-level data from the Rapid Survey on Children. But it is still...

-Newsclick.in Mired by controversies and scandals, the NDA Government has now secured another rare achievement. Recent disclosures, first reported in the ‘Economist’ magazine, indicate that the government has taken great pains to suppress a survey on child health, conducted by the UNICEF, in collaboration with the Government of India. The Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) was commissioned by the UPA Government and covers the period between 2013 and 2014. Normally the survey...