Failed by the system: Delhi family that lost 3 girls to hunger had no ration cards, no state help
A fact-finding mission led by a group of activists tried to piece together the circumstances leading to the deaths of three girls.
A champion of India’s poor: Sonia Gandhi’s most valuable, and least acknowledged, contribution
After Sonia Gandhi stepped down as president of the Indian National Congress this month after an often turbulent 19 years, many have commented on her mixed and bitterly contested political legacy.
Cash transfers instead of food rations is a bad idea
Every third malnourished child in the world is Indian. Every third child in India is malnourished. They deserve much better from their governments than escape paths to the central duty of a caring state to ensure adequate nutritious food in their bellies.
The death of 11-year-old Santoshi is a collective social and political shame
An 11-year-old child Santoshi dies in a remote village in Jharkhand. Her mother testifies to reporters that no one in her household had eaten a meal for a full eight days before her daughter died. There was not a grain in their mud house.
Jharkhand hunger death: A girl died crying for food. Her family is now accused of shaming India
In October, Koili Devi lost her young daughter to creeping hunger. Life gave her no chance to grieve – this was only the beginning of her long nightmare. The state administration, even at its highest levels, stigmatised her for bringing shame to her village and the nation with her claim that her daughter had died of starvation.
Unseeing the drought
The people of India’s villages carry collective memories of centuries of calamitous losses of sometimes millions of lives in famines. Famines have been pushed into history, unarguably one of free India’s greatest accomplishments.
The invisible drought
India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities.
Is the govt threatening to dismantle National Food Security Act?
It is troubling that the Centre has displayed a casual disregard for laws and court rulings that create a framework of statutory social rights for protecting the vulnerable.
Lessons from the tragedy in Chhapra
Even with many shortcomings the mid-day meal scheme is still the best implemented of all social programmes, comparing favourably to the public distribution system, the Integrated Child Development Services scheme and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Food security Bill: Why blame the poor and the hungry?
The debates around the national food security Bill—which will create legal duties for the state to provide food to citizens—have become overheated and often deeply polarized.