-The Financial Express Despite the delayed monsoon and slow progress in sowing, the government on Monday set a 30 million tonne (mt) Rice procurement target for the 2014-15 kharif marketing season, starting October. Despite the delayed monsoon and slow progress in sowing, the government on Monday set a 30 million tonne (mt) Rice procurement target for the 2014-15 kharif marketing season, starting October. This is a moderate revision from the previous year's kharif...

-The Financial Express For all its targeting, fake ration cards abound. The GPS tracking of trucks carrying ration shop grain and the SMS alerts were supposed to be unique ways in which the Chhattisgarh government had resolved the issue of pilferage of ration shop foodgrains. Once people were informed that the rations had left the FCI godowns and when they reached their ration shops, there was less scope for pilferage. Hardly surprising...

-The Financial Express Thiruvananthapuram: Following the Geographical Indication (GI) tag, Palakkadan Matta Rice from North Kerala has started going the mobile app-based retailing way. Following the Geographical Indication (GI) tag, Palakkadan Matta Rice from North Kerala has started going the mobile app-based retailing way. A farm specialising in Palakkadan Matta has launched a mobile application that facilitates retailing of the Rice and Rice products to supply anywhere in India....

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India's domestic compulsions and the danger of breaching the subsidy cap for wheat and Rice forced the government to thwart attempts by other World Trade Organization members to push through a new set of customs rules without addressing its concerns. The subsidy data, due to be released by the government over the next few weeks, will reveal that the subsidy on Rice was over 9% of...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...