Assign permissions to sharepoint list item

Question

I have a list with items.

I want to give unique permissions to the list items . a) People in the country1 group should only be able to see the value in the first column Country1 (i.e. MyGroup1-Country1, MyGroup2-Country1, MyGroup3-Country1)

b) If they have been added to MyGroup1 group they should only be able to see MyGroup1-Country1 value. This is the intersection of the first row and the first column.

c)Can I give unique permissions to each item to achieve this, or is there any other better way to do it.

      ListTitleitem
          Country1         Country2           Country3

MyGroup1  MyGroup1-Country1 MyGroup1-Country2   MyGroup1-Country3       
MyGroup2  MyGroup2-Country1 MyGroup2-Country2   MyGroup2-Country3 
MyGroup3  MyGroup3-Country1 MyGroup3-Country2   MyGroup3-Country3 

Answer 1

You cannot set permissions on the columns in SharePoint. You can however create custom list field iterators, that display the fields dynamically (read-only, editable, or hidden), depending on the group membership of the user.

Note, that this is not security, it is only hiding the information. The users will be able to see / edit items (every columns!) via other interfaces, like REST / client OM / web services, etc., as long as they have the permission on the item itself.