-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government should have calculated the costs of possible retaliation by other states before banning potato export from Bengal, agriculture experts have sAid. For now, no state has threatened a payback for the ban, clamped despite pleas from the chief ministers of Odisha and Assam after a shortage pushed up potato prices in Bengal. As the Bengal administration grapples with the problem, importers of essential foodstuff have sounded...

-Live Mint In the past year, ration cards are being replaced with smartcards that can track food doled out through the PDS system New Delhi: Mohanlal Kapoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the Kapoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they're not entitled...

-Newsclick.in Caste discrimination percolates down to the food plates for Musahar community in Madhepura district of Bihar reports Neha Dixit "The mahant of the Shankar Math told me to stay away from ultra-Left people the day I questioned the Collector about the hunger deaths in my village," recounts Prabhansh Manjhi. Prabhansh is from the Musahaar community in Madhepura district of Bihar. Estimated to be 2.3 million in the country, they are Mahadalits, one...

-The Guardian World Bank report calls for action to cut common pollutants such as soot, which could save millions of lives every year Cleaner cookstoves could save a million lives every year, but costs need to decrease sharply for poor households in developing countries to be able to afford them, according to a World Bank report. On thin ice: how cutting pollution can slow warming and save lives, published on Sunday evening, calls...

-The Hindu     The practices concerned are most widespread in South Asia and in South Asian diasporas. The European Parliament's recent resolution circumvents India's contention that caste oppression does not constitute racial discrimination. On October 10, the 766 members of the European Parliament, who represent just over half-a-billion people in 28-member-states, passed a historic resolution recognising caste-based discrimination and discrimination based on work and descent as a violation of human rights and an...