Dr U Jaikumaran is breathless with excitement over the phone. “The next five days will be hectic and crucial in our war against hunger. We have to transplant rice on 300 acres in just five days.” Dr Jaikumaran, a professor at the Kerala Agriculture University (KAU), has been building a Food Security Army (FSA) – men and women in green uniforms organised into nine regiments and 24 battalions – who are...
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Unwarranted optimism by Jayati Ghosh
Without policy efforts to deal specifically with issues such as reduced incomes and unemployment, the global economic crisis will be far from over. FOR most economic commentators, 2010 begins on an optimistic note. Just a year ago, there was much gloom about the world economy. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had broken out in full fury; asset markets in the United States, Europe and then most developing...
More »Indians spend 25% of income on food, 1.5% on health, 1.4% on EMIs
Of Indian households’ total annual income, 0.22 per cent is spent on buying newspapers — that is, if total national household annual income was Rs 100, 22 paise would be set aside for newspapers. Paying off bank loans (expenditure under equated monthly instalments) takes up 1.4 per cent of total household annual income. The share of health expenditure is 1.5 per cent, and that of education expenditure, 3.21 per cent....
More »Monetary steps also needed to tame inflation: PMEAC
The Prime Minister's economic adviser, C Rangarajan, wants the Reserve Bank to remove excess money from the system to check rising prices as food inflation neared the decade's high of 20 per cent. "We need to see that liquidity does not put inflationary pressures and for that some action on the monetary front would also be required," said Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) and a former...
More »Hard Times by Ashok Mitra
Food prices have shot up by more than 20 per cent in the course of the past 12 months. A vast proportion of the nation is being battered by the price rise — the fixed income group, the working classes, landless peasantry and small farmers who have to buy at least a part of the grains they consume from the market. There is, however, no upheaval among the suffering people....
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