Overview. Standing on the Threshold: Food Justice in India

This piece provides a summary of the articles detailing the recent fight for food justice in India. It begins by providing an overview of the state of food and nutrition in India and reflects on the experience to date of the role of the courts in promoting food justice. It goes on to describe some of the ongoing struggles to claim rights and justice, highlighting implementation, capacity, incentive and cultural barriers to realisation. Finally, this article focuses on the enduring and new challenges to attaining food security in India, strong food justice system or not

Citizens' action: how bridging the accountability gap leads to improved services

The goal of universal water and sanitation coverage remains a distant hope. Despite all the efforts of those in the water and sanitation sectors something is missing. This ‘something’ is accountability to the people. Poor people are asking not only where are the services but who is responsible when they are not provided? This is the essence of Citizens’ Action: citizens are supported to engage in dialogue with service providers and governments; holding them to account for the provision – or lack of it – of services. WaterAid and partners have instigated a series of Citizens’ Actions. A typical action includes community mobilization, generating a picture of service levels, raising awareness of entitlements, preparing for engagement with providers and a dialogue. This paper provides some examples of ongoing Actions and makes a call for other organizations to join this work to turn it into a people’s movement demanding accountability

Bridging the Malnutrition Gap with Social Audits and Community Participation

There is an urgent need to increase coverage of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) particularly in Madhya Pradesh and to overcome governance failures, such as staff absenteeism, leakage of funds and supplies and false reporting of coverage. By increasing community participation, ownership of the scheme, and improving programme oversight, social audits can result in increased coverage as well as better accountability among service?providers and the relevant line departments. The bulk of experience with social audits comes from implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which mandates that social audits be conducted prior to fund release. There is also some experience of using social audits for ICDS in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. This article examines the experiences from those two states and draws lessons for its application in states such as Madhya Pradesh

Who do ICDS and PDS Exclude and What Can be Done to Change This?

This article looks at the specifics of who the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) exclude and what can be done to change this. It discusses three different types of exclusion: official exclusion, typically from committing too few resources; implementation flaws; and flawed policy. The article argues that persistence with a poverty cutoff simply perpetuates exclusion. However, the progressive impact of improved judiciability of exclusion due to implementation flaws while making a case for tightening the system cannot be overstated. The article suggests three ways forward: (1) make rights desirable to encourage people to make claims and make ICDS and PDS more universal; (2) ensure that potential innovations such as biometrics, coupons and cash transfers empower the poor, not just the bureaucrats; and (3) empower citizens to fix the ICDS and PDS which will in turn help fix the overall food system

The State of Food Security Report 2012 and the Enigma of Achieving Millennium Development Goals

Globally quoted and unquestioningly accepted, the State of the Food Insecurity in the world report 2012, has made significant reduction in the numbers of hungry globally at 868 million. In case of India it has made significant upward revision of hunger prevalence in 1990-92 and significant downward revision for 2010 resulting in 34.9% estimated hunger decline. In the midst of claims of robust methodological revisions, its calculations and assumptions set a dangerous precedence for the policy-makers and planners of the reluctant country governments and worst for the hungry of the world. This paper discusses the SOFI 2012, critiques the declining hunger numbers in SOFI 2012 and produces alternate data sets including independent surveys of Government of India, to counter the reduction claims. It also makes a case for greater public dialogue and engagement in such reports, their methods, metrics and numbers

Abstracts of National Conference on Research and Developments in Material Processing, Modelling and Characterization 2020

This book presents the abstracts of the papers presented to the Online National Conference on Research and Developments in Material Processing, Modelling and Characterization 2020 (RDMPMC-2020) held on 26th and 27th August 2020 organized by the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Science in Association with the Department of Production and Industrial Engineering, National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India. Conference Title: National Conference on Research and Developments in Material Processing, Modelling and Characterization 2020Conference Acronym: RDMPMC-2020Conference Date: 26–27 August 2020Conference Location: Online (Virtual Mode)Conference Organizer: Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, National Institute of Technology JamshedpurCo-organizer: Department of Production and Industrial Engineering, National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, IndiaConference Sponsor: TEQIP-