-The Hindu Development, price rise and jobs will be the overriding voter concerns in 2014 Lok Sabha poll Results from a nearly 20,000-strong opinion poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) for CNN-IBN and The Hindu indicate that ‘development and the economy' and ‘price rise' will dominate voter concerns in 2014. Corruption comes in at a distant fifth, just half as important to voters as ‘development and...

-The United Nations Small-scale farmers - who produce the majority of food in the developing world - need to be better integrated into markets to reduce global hunger and poverty, the United Nations food and agricultural agency today reported urging more nuanced policymaking for smallholder farmers. "Policy interventions that aim at encouraging greater levels of smallholder production for sale in markets need to take better account of the heterogeneity of smallholder households,"...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Basmati rice exports to the US have plunged because many Indian firms are under an import alert by the US authorities, leading to a detailed scrutiny for pesticide residue in every grain being shipped out. This has raised costs, upset schedules and obstructed sales, prompting exporters to seek government intervention. In the first quarter of calendar year 2013, exports were down to 19,583 tonne. With 31 Indian...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Cabinet will on Thursday decide on raising natural gas prices for the first time in three years even as the move faces stiff resistance as it would result in rise in electricity tariff and fertiliser cost. The oil ministry's proposal to price all domestically produced natural gas as per a complex international hub and imported LNG-based formula suggested by the Rangarajan panel is listed as item number 8...

-The Business Standard Drugs are unaffordable, but price control is the wrong answer There is little doubt that medicines in India are too expensive for most of the population. For the poorest 20 per cent of Indians, the expenditure on medicines alone is 85 per cent of what they spend on their health, according to the National Sample Survey. A World Bank study on the subject found that just out-of-pocket medical costs...