Nine of 10 mud-eating children are in the last stage of malnutrition. Eight of 10 people are deprived of every national social-security net and live with starvation and hunger. The average life span is 40 In April, the Hindustan Times revealed acute deprivation in the Uttar Pradesh village of Ganne, part of the former constituency of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.   Now, a Supreme Court inquiry team that visited the area...

The suburb of Govandi in Mumbai is home to the Indian city's only rubbish dump. On any given day children work and play here, seemingly unaware of the scorching sun and the stench from the waste heaps. Among them are probably some of the 8 million children still out of school across India. Few people notice their presence. But in Govandi alone, more than 1,500 children are thought to be...

Tamil Nadu's success in implementing the NREGA shows its commitment to social welfare, and the way ahead for other states. The share of women in the NREGA workforce has remained high from the beginning and is the highest in the country The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), enacted in 2005, has had a varied record so far. In many states, implementation has been lame (e.g. Bihar and Gujarat) or...

The government is spending billions of dollars on welfare schemes, and plans even more this year. But that is news to Poona, whose daughter may soon die from that stain on India's growth story -- malnutrition. Poona, who married at 14 and breaks quarry stones for a living, shielded her daughter's sunken face from a harsh summer sun with her blue sari. She does not know Urmila's weight, but the...

A nation where hungry children are forced to eat mud has no right to call itself a superpower or a civilised nation. What makes such reports frustrating for someone like me, who has been feeding poor children for the past one decade, is that reaching food to hungry children is not complicated or costly. It costs very little to give a child the required amount of calories and supplements she...