-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik's flagship programme of rice distribution at Re 1 per kg might run into rough weather if the Centre continues to send more wheat instead of rice as required by the state under the National Food Security Act. Concerned at the development, the chief minister has shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to allocate more rice under the act instead of...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar (Odisha): The Centre-sponsored Jan Aushadhi scheme is suffering from shortage of medicines and reluctance of doctors to prescribe drugs by their generic names. The scheme, which is being run by the Odisha branch of the Indian Red Cross Society in 22 districts of the state, was launched to sell quality generic medicines at subsidised prices. Though the city has two Jan Aushadhi stores, chances are that you will have to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Better known as Jharkhand’s waterman, Simon Oraon had always been more popular among farmers in the district’s Bedo block than the country’s newspaper-reading public. But all that changed on Monday, when the President’s office announced that he would be given the coveted Padma Shri award for his contribution to environment conservation. Oraon, 83, has been waging a war against drought since the day he dropped out of school as...

-Scroll.in Institutions that provide cheap or free meals are not mere populism – they are vital for the food security of people on the margins. My first experience of a “community kitchen” was in Brazil where we were taken to try out a meal at the Popular Restaurant in Lauros de Freitas. The serpentine queue outside it surprising initially, seemed entirely unexceptional once we had been served: for one real (approximately Rs...