-The United Nations The United Nations today launched a programme to empower poor rural women through economic integration and food security initiatives. “Accelerating Progress Toward the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women” is a five-year initiative that will focus on improving food and nutrition security, increasing rural women’s incomes, enhancing leadership and participation in rural institutions, and creating a more responsive policy environment at national and international levels. “When women are empowered and can...

-The Economic Times Ahead of the first meeting of the Group of Ministers on the land bill, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has asserted that the proposed land bill balances the needs of economic growth with concerns of the common man. In a note for the meeting scheduled for Thursday, Ramesh has argued that the existing Land Acquisition Act, 1894 shows little regard for those whose land is acquired. The note draws...

-Bloomberg It wasn't the Gettsyburg Address -- unless it's poker faces we're comparing. Future historians aren't going to be parsing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech for hidden meanings, and rhetoricians won't be delighting in the majesty of its style and the compression of its effects. It inflamed no passions, as did Mitt Romney's words about the "47 percent," and asserted no big idea or thesis, unless there was one contained in the...

-The Economic Times A nation intermittently bombarded over the past several decades by messages highlighting the dangers of smoking, the cruelty of crackers or the crime of dowry is about to get a new one, this time on the perils of cartelisation. A message that mirrors as much as it seeks to address the concerns of a globalising India and a changing society at a time the national discourse is dominated by...

-Outlook Amid furore over FDI in multi-brand retail, the politicians and farmers in the leading agrarian state of Punjab are speaking in different voices over the issue. While Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said the concept may be successful in developed countries like USA, he feared that it may not work in this country. "If the FDI comes, big players will eat into the share of small traders and that will be against...