-VillageSquare.in The lure of processed fast food is not just an urban India problem - rural Indians are finding it increasingly hard to resist readily available junk food as a recent survey from the Development Intelligence Unit shows. Many of us have fond memories of drinking roohafza and eating homemade fryums.  OK, fryums are a deep-fried potato snack and roohafza might have fruit and herbs as its base but is loaded with sugar.  Still,...

-Telangana.com India’s school meals programme is UBIquitous, helping deliver food to millions. It faces threats from multiple angles. It would be hard to find a larger or more universal school meals programme than that in India. Until Covid-19 hit, more than 87% of children in rural government schools were being served the ‘Mid-Day Meal’. At last count, the scheme covered 118 million children. The benefits of school meals are well established, but government...

-Economic and Political Weekly The food systems approach proposes reducing food loss and waste as a potential solution to achieve food and nutritional security. This is formalised in the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Despite the issue receiving such UBIquitous recognition, systematic efforts to measure and address FLW are absent in India. Our calculations show that one-sixth of agricultural production, accounting for one-tenth of the gross value added in...

-Scroll.in Coal mining continues to flourish in the country but it is no longer a major source of employment. For four months in 2019, Umesh Kumar Saw protested against a new coal mining project that was sprouting up just 50 meters behind his home, threatening to gobble up three acres of his family’s agricultural land. But when the mining company offered him a job, he relented. His family gave up their land...

-The Hindu The labour codes will only better India’s ‘ease of doing business’ ranking instead of improving conditions of employment In an interview with The Hindu in October this year, the Union Labour Minister claimed that the four labour codes would generate employment and secure the basic rights of the workers. He also claimed that the labour codes seek to universalise the right to minimum wage of workers and social security entitlements....