-The Hindu Business Line   As Indian consumption rises, the cereal available for exports may shrink For millennia, rice has been an integral part of the cuisine across Asian nations. China (140 million tonnes) and India (105 million tonnes) are two of the world's largest producers of rice followed at a distance by Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Pakistan. Major exporters include Thailand, India, Vietnam and Pakistan while major importers include...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Just days before the 2014-15 Union Budget, the government on Monday said it plans to amend the archaic Factories Act, 1948 - the first move in more than a decade to revamp labour laws. Most governments have avoided labour reforms for fear of a backlash from the politically powerful labour lobby. Companies have cited obsolete labour laws as a key hurdle for doing business and the...

-The Hindu   India is among the world champions of social underspending. Without enlightened social policies, growth mania is unlikely to deliver more under the new government than it did under the previous one Few people today remember the letter written on August 7, 2013 by Mr. Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In this letter, available on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) website, Mr. Modi criticised...

-The Hindu Business Line   Perpetual growth is a piece of nonsense. The focus should be on protecting livelihoods through sustainable MEAns Construct a building, demolish it, reconstruct, break it down again, and go on repeating this MEAningless exercise. You will have economic growth, as currently MEAsured. But no net gain in employment during the endless cycle of construction and demolition, no net increase in productive capacity, and no appreciable change in poverty...

-The Business Standard C Rangarajan, former head of the former Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, answers questions on the latest official poverty estimate by a committee he'd chaired. Edited excerpts of a talk with Indivjal Dhasmana: * Your panel has suggested these poverty lines be delinked from social welfare schemes. What would be the exercise's relevance? Is it of only academic interest? Poverty ratios have already been delinked from various social programmes. The...