-The Times of India Rising food prices during 2010-11 may have pushed three million Bangladeshis into poverty, and kept eight million Indians from getting out of poverty bracket, finds a UN report released on Thursday. In Asia and Pacific region, food inflation pushed nearly four million people into poverty. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific ( ESCAP) report on regional cooperation for inclusive and sustainable development says...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-The Economic Times Every concerned and right-thinking citizen of this country wants poverty to be reduced as early as possible. Governments and policymakers have given assurances, time and again, that they are making their earnest efforts in that direction. Yet, there is a big debate in the country, ranging from the very definition of poverty to the number of people below the poverty line. Some academic stalwarts have devoted almost their whole...

-The Economic Times When the country was growing at more than 8 per cent for about a decade, services and manufacturing were the darlings of policy-makers, investors and talking heads. Agriculture, a segment that employs nearly half the hundred crore population of the country, was hardly mentioned even in passing. This year, thanks to a poor monsoon, suddenly the farmers are the centre of India's growth story, or the lack of...

-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...