-The Indian Express   Banning cotton exports hurts the farmer, signals India as an unpredictable supplier to the world Two days after the commerce ministry imposed a sudden ban on cotton exports, there are indications the government is preparing grounds for a facesaver. In all likelihood, a limited window may be opened at least for allowing exports for which registration certificates have already been issued by the Directorate General for Foreign Trade. Finance...

In what could dramatically alter economic activity in almost 45 districts across five states - Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu - and the entire state of Goa, a panel of the Union environment ministry has recommended that mining and industrial growth be banned in more than 80 revenue blocks and strictly regulated in another 75-odd revenue blocks or talukas.  It also recommended a large set of regulations on other aspects...

-The Economic Times Small and marginal farmers who constitute more than 80% of total farmer households in the country face exclusion from formal financial channels," says the Nair Committee on priority sector lending. The same report says "commercial banks have been prescribed targets since late 1960s for priority sector lending".  The banking system failed the farmers and the needy despite nationalisation, but is there a viable model that could help the millions...

-The Hindustan Times    Poor households of urban India are emerging hotspots for hunger and ill-health and children there live in worse conditions than in rural areas, says a new UN report released on Wednesday.   The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report -- state of the world’s children 2012 -- say that like most parts of the world, children living in around 49,000 slums in India are "invisible". Half of these slums are in...

-The Telegraph The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has unequivocally endorsed and welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand against anti-Kudankulam protesters and described it as “unusually forthright and strong”. An editorial in the latest issue of the Organiser, the Sangh’s official mouthpiece, claimed it was the first publication to spotlight the “devious” role played by the Church in spearheading the protests against the stalled Tamil Nadu nuclear power plant. The reference was to two earlier...