No peace in India
London: India’s booming economy may be attracting global attention today but the Asian power still ranks a poor 109th among 121 nations on the scale of peace, a global peace index released on May 30 said. The global peace index published a week before a Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany, rates 121 countries from Algeria to Zimbabwe on some 24 factors including levels of violence, organised crime and military expenditure. “This is a wake-up call for leaders around the globe”, said Steve Killelea, who commissioned the study from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which is linked to the news weekly The Economist.
Worst child welfare
New Delhi: With almost 50% of its children underfed, India has some of the worst indicators of child welfare in the world. Midday meals were introduced after a nationwide campaign so that schools could retain students, rather than lose them to hunger and wage earnings. In 2001, the Supreme Court directed all states to serve cooked midday meals to children in govt. schools up to Class V. Later, in 2004, it passed an order requiring that “every child eligible for cooked meal under the midday meal scheme, in all states and union territories, shall be provided with the said meal not later than January 2005.”
