-PTI   NEW DELHI: Backing the government's stance on food subsidy at the WTO, India Inc today said it is important to ensure legal entitlement of low-cost ration to the poor in order to achieve all-round development. "For us in India, we have to ring-fence the interest of subsistence farmers and poor by procuring grains at minimum support price (MSP) and ensuring legal entitlement of low-cost ration to the poor," Assocham President Rana...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Even as commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma sought to push an interim solution or a "peace clause" that will prevent WTO members from seeking penalties from countries such as India for breach of subsidy cap, the Opposition parties and farmer groups have asked the government to reject the solution, arguing that it is not in the country's interests. At next week's Bali ministerial meeting,...

-Economic and Political Weekly There is overwhelming evidence to show that capital-intensive metro rail systems serve only a small proportion of the total trips in cities in developing countries such as India. Public-private partnerships have not been very successful, and the Delhi Metro, which is considered to be the most successful project despite falling far short of its projected number of users, enjoys numerous tax benefits not offered to the bus...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the general elections just four months away and rollout of UPA's flagship Food Security Act at stake, commerce minister Anand Sharma is facing a challenge that few of his eight predecessors who attended WTO ministerial meetings have faced. Already, there is a demand to block a compromise formula or a "peace clause" that will prevent any WTO member from seeking penalties against a developing country...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Trained health workers and even schoolteachers can provide effective care to patients with an array of mental disorders and make up for shortages of psychiatrists, medical researchers from India and Europe said on Wednesday. The researchers, who examined experiments done in 22 developing countries including India, have found that doctors, nurses and even lay health workers untrained in mental health or neurology can provide health care to mentally...