News 3-part series on a tech fix for malnutrition, as India starts mandatorily fortifying rice in public schemes.

1. It was not clear the policy won't harm some groups, yet Govt coerced states to give out iron and synthetic vitamin fortified grains thewire.in/rights/plastic… 2. Next story traces absent infrastructure, lack of labs that could test quality and amount of micronutrients, and what was impact on small mills asked overnight to switch to supplying fortified grains. Govt owes them lakhs in payment thewire.in/agriculture/fo…

Part 2 in The Wire series traces how even states such as Jharkhand that lacked capacity to test fortified rice, had no choice but to distribute it the poorest;
with missing infrastructure and little quality control thewire.in/rights/fortifi… In Jharkhand, 56,000 quintals fortified rice rations were distributed while the state lacked a fully equipped laboratory to confirm the quality and the levels of vitamins and iron in fortified rice

I interviewed a tailor who worked at the Anaj Mandi factory in Delhi for 10 years. He said at the factory, he stitched low cost bags for Airtel Vodafone Reliance Zomato & several state govts. The owners usually placed one child worker at every 2 machines. newslaundry.com/2019/12/12/bra… A caretaker locked the migrant workers in the building every night, because the local residents preferred it and felt safer this way