This Report is one of the first comprehensive studies on young children in India. It focuses on children under 6 years of age and presents key aspects of their well-being and development. With the highest number of neonatal, infant and under-5 deaths in the world, there is an urgent need to address issues that continue to affect the young child in India. This volume: Introduces two young child indices aggregating selected indicators to separately track child outcomes and child circumstances. Provides an account of the current situation of the young child in terms of physical and cognitive development, access to care, disadvantaged children and major issues that have led to the continued neglect of this age group. Explores the policy and legal framework, fiscal space and the role and obligations of key stakeholders, including the state, private sector, civil society, media and the family. Highlights key recommendations and action points that can help to improve the ecosystem for early childhood care and development. Drawing on specially commissioned technical background papers, supplemented by extensive field experience of Mobile Creches in childcare, this Report will be of interest to practitioners, policymakers and influencers, think tanks and researchers of public policy, development studies, human rights, sociology and social anthropology, as well as general readers. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781003026488, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. .

Contributed articles.

This book provides a revamped, transformative, and fiscally sustainable developmental agenda for India to radically improve the well-being and livelihoods of its citizens. Grounded in a ‘people first’ approach, this alternative agenda focuses on seven vital development and inter-connected areas, including health, education, food and nutrition, child development, gender, livelihood and jobs, and urbanization. The volume highlights the systemic issues plaguing these sectors and offers pragmatic and implementable solutions to address them. The author takes cognizance of the COVID-19 pandemic and draws attention to the limitations of the current public policies and suggests cost-effective interventions and strategies that focus on the poor. The volume discusses crucial themes of universalizing healthcare, battling malnutrition and food insecurity, ensuring quality schooling, unshackling gendered mindsets, enhancing livelihoods and improving the urban quality of life to spell out a pragmatic and workable development agenda for India. Accessible and reader-friendly, the book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, public policy, governance, development policy, public administration, political studies, South Asia studies. It will also be of interest to professionals in the development sector.

"The prevalence of child undernutrition in India is among the highest in the world, nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, with dire consequences for morbidity, mortality, productivity and economic growth. Drawing on qualitative studies and quantitative evidence from large household surveys, this book explores the dimensions of child undernutrition in India and examines the effectiveness of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)program, India's main early child development intervention, in addressing it. Although levels of undernutrition in India declined modestly during the 1990s, the reductions lagged behind those achieved by other countries with similar economic growth. Nutritional inequalities across different states and socioeconomic and demographic groups remain large. Although the ICDS program appears to be well-designed and well-placed to address the multi-dimensional causes of malnutrition in India, several problems exist that prevent it from reaching its potential. The book concludes with a discussion of a number of concrete actions that can be taken to bridge the gap between the policy intentions of ICDS and its actual implementation."

Understanding the place of religion in Early Childhood Education and Care is of critical importance for the development of cultural literacy and plays a key role in societal coherence and inclusion. This international handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the place of religion in the societal educational arenas of the very youngest children across the globe. Drawing together contributions from leading international experts across disciplinary backgrounds, it offers a critical view of how to approach the complexities around the place of religion in Early Childhood Education and Care. Through its four parts, the book examines the theoretical, methodological, policy and practice perspectives and explores the complex intersections of transmission of "cultural heritage" and "national values" with the diverse, changing societal contexts. Each chapter contributes to an increased understanding of how the place of religion in Early Childhood Education and Care can be understood across continents, countries and educational systems. The Routledge International Handbook of the Place of Religion in Early Childhood Education and Care is an essential resource for academics, researchers, students and practitioners working in Early Childhood Education, Sociology of Childhood, Religious Education and other related fields

Growth is one of the human body’s most intricate processes: each body part or region has its own unique growth patterns. Yet at the individual and population levels, growth patterns are sensitive to adverse conditions, genetic predispositions, and environmental changes. And despite the body’s capacity to compensate for these developmental setbacks, the effects may be far-reaching, even life-long. The Handbook of Growth and Growth Monitoring in Health and Disease brings this significant and complex field together in one comprehensive volume: impact of adverse variables on growth patterns; issues at different stages of prenatal development, childhood, and adolescence; aspects of catch-up growth, endocrine regulation, and sexual maturation; screening and assessment methods; and international perspectives. Tables and diagrams, applications to other areas of health and disease, and summary points help make the information easier to retain. Together, these 140 self-contained chapters in 15 sections [ok?] cover every area of human growth, including: Intrauterine growth retardation. Postnatal growth in normal and abnormal situations. Cells and growth of tissues. Sensory growth and development. Effects of disease on growth. Methods and standards for assessment of growth, and more. The Handbook of Growth and Growth Monitoring in Health and Disease is an invaluable addition to the reference libraries of a wide range of health professionals, among them health scientists, physicians, physiologists, nutritionists, dieticians, nurses, public health researchers, epidemiologists, exercise physiologists, and physical therapists. It is also useful to college-level students and faculty in the health disciplines, and to policymakers and health economists.

In the last decade, addressing the persistent problem of maternal, infant, young child and adolescent malnutrition in India has gained significant attention. With the well-established serious implications of malnutrition on mortality and morbidity; mental health and cognitive development; activity and productivity and overall economic development, today there is an unprecedented political commitment to improving the grave woman and child nutrition scenario in the country. POSHAN ABHIYAAN (Nutrition Mission) was launched in a Mission mode by the Honourable Prime Minister of India on March 8, 2018, followed by measures for an effective implementation of an integrated nutrition strategy through POSHAN 2.0 in 2022. The book with 15 chapters tracks the history of evolvement of public nutrition policies and strategies, presents an update on the nutrition scenario, analyses the experiences and synthesises emerging lessons in the prevention and control of malnutrition. Additionally, the book includes chapters with details of each of the various government systems such as Health, ICDS, NRLM, PDS, Education/MDM, Water-Sanitation that provide lead in mainstreaming nutrition actions that directly or indirectly impact on accelerating the improvement of the nutrition situation of women, adolescents and children. The book is intended to be an indispensable reference for teachers and students of nutrition, community medicine, public health and development as well as professionals involved in the formulation and implementation of the nutrition policies and programmes. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

"Collection of incunabula and early medical prints in the library of the Surgeon-general's office, U.S. Army": Ser. 3, v. 10, p. 1415-1436.