-PTI Amid growing political opposition in India for easing of foreign investment norms in retail and other sectors, US-based companies like Wal-Mart and Prudential Financial are lobbying hard with their own lawmakers here to garner support for their Indian business expansion plans. As per their latest lobbying disclosure reports filed with the House of Representatives and the Senate, the US-based companies and industry groups spent millions of dollars since the beginning of...

—AFP World farm production must rise 60 per cent by 2050 to meet the needs of a growing population but this has to happen in a “more sustainable way”, the U.N. food agency FAO and the OECD said on Wednesday. “It’s mostly going to be about productivity”, said Angel Gurria, head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at a press conference in Rome, explaining that farmland area would increase...

-The Hindu 8.1 million children are out of school, 42% are underweight India has slipped by 12 ranks in the global grading on the child development index, which denotes health, education and nutrition, between 1995 and 2010. Japan is the best place in the world to be a child, while Somalia is the worst, a latest report has suggested. The Child Development Index report released by NGO Save the Children makes an aggregate...

-Live Mint There is no dearth of advisors for a government considered to be in the grip of a policy paralysis and whose prime minister is dubbed an “underachiever”. In this season of India-bashing, US President Barack Obama spared some time from his election campaign and offered some pearly words of wisdom on the Indian economy. This came at a time when in his own backyard, thousands of people marched in...

-The Times of India India's official unemployment rate last year was 3.8%, data released recently by the Labour Bureau shows, but, as always, averages hide many stories. A closer look at the numbers shows that unemployment rises with education level to 10% among graduates, and higher still for backward castes. The Chandigarh-based Labour Bureau under the union ministry of labour and employment released the 'Employment and Unemployment Survey 2012' last week. The...