-Live Mint In the past year, ration cards are being replaced with smartcards that can track food doled out through the PDS system New Delhi: Mohanlal KaPoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the KaPoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they're not entitled...

-Newsclick.in Caste discrimination percolates down to the food plates for Musahar community in Madhepura district of Bihar reports Neha Dixit "The mahant of the Shankar Math told me to stay away from ultra-Left people the day I questioned the Collector about the hunger deaths in my village," recounts Prabhansh Manjhi. Prabhansh is from the Musahaar community in Madhepura district of Bihar. Estimated to be 2.3 million in the country, they are Mahadalits, one...

-The Hindu The Cabinet will take a call on the shape of a new global agreement that India would push for at the for the upcoming climate change talks and over the next two years till it is signed in 2015. The Union Cabinet is likely to decide the non-negotiables for the upcoming climate change negotiations on Thursday. The Cabinet will take a call on the shape of the new global agreement...

-The Guardian World Bank report calls for action to cut common pollutants such as soot, which could save millions of lives every year Cleaner cookstoves could save a million lives every year, but costs need to decrease sharply for Poor households in developing countries to be able to afford them, according to a World Bank report. On thin ice: how cutting pollution can slow warming and save lives, published on Sunday evening, calls...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Unchecked climate change, scientists warn, will slow down economic growth, impact poverty reduction, lower food production and drive up food prices. A leaked copy of the draft report of the Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reviewed by ET, sounds the most urgent warning till date on the adverse impacts of unchecked climate change. While Poor African countries stand out as the likely...