Farmers are planning to chart their requirements and compile a model election manifesto for political parties to consider. The model manifesto will be released ahead of the parties making their poll promises public, according to the Federation of Tamil Nadu Agriculturalists Association secretary C. Nallasami. Addressing the media here on Saturday Mr. Nallasami pointed out that farmers, whether they were raising food crops or cash crops, were facing hardship all through the...

The chamber said concrete steps need to be taken to promote investment, given that recent data shows the investment growth rate slowed from 38.1% in 2007-08 to 36.5% in 2009-10 The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Tuesday called for the government to provide tax incentives on agricultural activities in the forthcoming Budget to encourage private participation and adoption of new technologies in the sector. “CII has recommended encouraging private sector participation...

There are many critics and sceptics with respect to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which came into being because of political pressure that managed to overcome quite strenuous opposition from some of the most influential policy making circles. It is likely that much of this criticism is not really because of the declared reasons, like fiscal costs (which are thus far very little) and potential leakage. Rather,...

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase. THE dramatic increase in food inflation over the past two years has been associated with several surprises. One major surprise has been how the top economic policymakers in the country have responded to it. The initial response was one of apparent disbelief, followed very quickly by the...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....