-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 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,"...

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Less than one in five single working women, excluding those divorced and widowed, take their own investment decisions, a recent all-India survey has found. Despite handling responsibilities at their workplace, they depend on parents and family members, friends and financial advisers when it comes to taking a call on money matters such as where and how much to invest. The reasons for this behaviour vary from...

-The Economic Times Criticism of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has led to the government dropping the idea of issuing an Ordinance and, instead, saying it would try to get the Bill passed in a special session of Parliament. But doubts persist over the very concept of the Bill. Is it not extravagant to subsidise food for such a large part of the population when the poor constitute only 30 per...