The Government of India devotes only 1.35% of its GDP to health care as of now. The Government's investment in public health must at least double. Nations that have invested heavily in public health facilities, such as China, spend anywhere between 5 and 8% of their GDP on public health.

The benefits of decentralised midday meal kitchens, where noon meals are freshly cooked at the school premises, go far beyond the health benefits for students. These kitchens can be a game changer for rural women as I learnt from Manu Naik, a widow and a mother of two.

The government schools in Maharashtra will now have more variety of food in the menu. Apart from the regular khichdi which is the staple, children will also get to eat dishes made of eggs along with some local fruit.

Uma Devi is a frontline healthcare worker in rural Uttar Pradesh who has marched on despite strife in her personal life, and has been honoured by Kareena Kapoor, actor and brand ambassador for UNICEF, for promoting mother and child health.

A nonprofit, Transform Rural India Foundation, is working with hundreds of thousands villagers in Ranchi and Simdega districts of Jharkhand to familiarise them with various government health schemes for pregnant and lactating mothers, including free institutional delivery.

It's been more than two years since children in Uttar Pradesh's anganwadis have been served hot cooked meals, though most other states have resumed them, post pandemic. But India's most populous state, with a high burden of malnutrition, continues to distribute dry rations. The state government has given an assurance that hot meals will be resumed from January 2023.

On May 11, 1998 India successfully carried out underground nuclear tests at a site three kilometres away from the Khetolai village in Pokhran. Twenty four years, the village that made India a global leader in nuclear energy, has little drinking water, barely functioning health centres and a problem of drug dealing and gambling. A ground report.

On October 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually inaugurated 600 farmers' centres which seek to provide agriculture-related solutions and make farming easier for the cultivators. Gaon Connection visited one such centre in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi to take stock of how this new initiative is being implemented. Details here.

Last year, the panchayat polls in Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki turned murky when a minor daughter of a Dalit, who was contesting the polls, was allegedly gangraped. The survivor and her family complain that they continue to face threats from the accused who are free on bail. In a series titled 'Twice Cursed', Gaon Connection revisits families of the victims and survivors of rape, now forgotten.

Bilahta and Katahari, two adivasi villages, are located on the border of Panna Tiger Reserve's core and buffer zones. They have no source of water other than a jhiriya that is located deep in the forest, and the tribal women walk four kilometres everyday in order to get water for their families. These villages have no metalled road nor electricity.