-The Times of India With the state budget all set to be presented on July 12, TOI takes a hard look at the government's cheap rice scheme and its impact on politics and employment. Will cheap rice boil? Let's look at the math. Reducing the price from Rs 3 to Re 1 per kg will help a family save Rs 60 per month. Till now, poor families got rice from the Public Distribution...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Large numbers of poor and vulnerable are exposed to risks and unexpected difficulties like unemployment, ill health, and natural disasters, an Asian Development Bank ( ADB) study says, because of lack of adequate social protection systems in many fast-growing middle-income countries in Asia and the Pacific. The Social Protection Index: Assessing Results for Asia and the Pacific-released on Wednesday gives India a score of 0.051, below most...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared an ordinance to implement the politically significant national food security bill without waiting for Parliament's monsoon session that is about a month away. The decision to press ahead with the ordinance - delayed after the government sought to enlarge political support for the bill - is rooted in Congress's determination to project commitment to food security as an key aspect...

-The New York Times NEW DELHI - The philosophical owner of India's most profitable newspaper used to tell his senior editors that his publication was like a temple. The objective of a temple, he said, was to use the entertainment of rituals and the frivolity of festivals to lead people into the sanctum sanctorum, where more serious matter resided. The outer sections of his newspaper - the dramatic news, the sports...

-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,"...