-The Hindu In the last three years, important entitlements for children have been undermined by the Centre The recent notification of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, making Aadhaar compulsory for midday meals in government schools, has attracted the criticism it deserves. This notification serves no clear purpose other than to force children to get enrolled under Aadhaar. The government, unfortunately, managed to create the impression that the notification had been retracted,...

-PTI New Delhi: The government is considering imposing import duty on wheat in order to protect farmers amid projections of a record output this year, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K. Pattanayak said today. On December 8, the government had reduced customs duty on wheat to zero from 10 per cent to boost domestic availability and check retail prices. Now that the country is all set to harvest a record production of 96.64 million tonnes...

-Livemint.com Lessons learnt from the Right to Food case can be applied for other social issues that end up at the Supreme Court’s doorstep every day New Delhi: In 2001, 47 tribals and Dalits were starved to death in south-eastern Rajasthan as the state reeled from its third consecutive year of drought. The tragedy occurred despite India’s warehouses were brimming with an excess of around 40 million tonnes of foodgrains that year. Weeks...

-The Hindu Among SAARC nations, it’s third behind Sri Lanka, Maldives India slipped down one place from 130 to 131 among the 188 countries ranked in terms of human development, says the 2016 Human Development Report (HDR) released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday. India’s human development index (HDI) value of 0.624 puts it in the “medium human development” category, alongside countries such as Congo, Namibia and Pakistan. It is...

-The New Indian Express BARGARH: Harvesting of sugarcane in Bargarh district has been delayed by over three months, leaving the farmers worried. While sugarcane grown in the last kharif season is yet to be harvested, the target area for the crop in the current rabi season has been increased by almost 300 hectares (ha). Harvesting has been stopped as the State-owned Bargarh Cooperative Sugar Mills that procures the entire sugarcane stock...