From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

The Posco project has turned into a political hot potato with the two main Opposition parties trying to extract as much out of it as possible, hoping the Rs 51000 crore project turns into another Singur. At a time when Naveen Patnaik government finds itself embroiled in a number of unsavoury controversies, including horse trading during the Rajya Sabha elections, the Congress and the BJP are looking to deliver the coup...

Putting water on the Concurrent List is not necessarily an act of centralisation, though it could lead to such a development. That danger is real and needs to be avoided. The Union Ministry of Water Resources has for long been arguing for a shift of water to the Concurrent List without any serious expectation of its happening, but has now begun to pursue the idea more actively. The Ashok Chawla committee,...

India’s fiscal policy is not supportive of monetary measures that the country’s central bank is employing to fight rampant inflation, the prime minister’s honorary economic advisor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist Raghuram Rajan said, while singling out the proposed Food Security Bill as a particular cause for concern. The Bill, which proposes to give about 68 per cent of population the legal right to subsidised food, will not only...

In the wake of mass protest by locals against land acquisition process The Union government on Sunday asked the Orissa government not to take precipitate action in the wake of a mass protest by locals against the land acquisition process launched at Govindpur village for the Posco steel plant. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said in a statement that coercion was not the way to resolve the crisis. He hoped that the Orissa...