-The Business Standard   Seize the chance to improve the food security Act Now that the National Food Security Act is set to be amended to give states more time to implement the legislation, several of its flaws should be re-examined and the Act suitably amended. The immediate need for an amendment arose because the deadline of a year for its enforcement in all states (that is, by July 5, 2014) was, oddly,...

-The Hindu Business Line   Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change the more they remain the same ): A French proverb. In its earnest to tackle rising Food inflation the new Government has taken a welcome initiative to delist fruits/ vegetables including onions (FVO) from the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, while all other measures are as usual - short term of political expediency, repeated several...

-The Business Standard   The government needs counter cyclical policies to tackle vegflation, which has become a recurrent problem Somebody help. Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley are held hostage, not by jihadists, recalcitrant opposition, international capital or the ever-erratic monsoon, but by faceless, nameless manipulators of Nasik, Navi Mumbai and Azadpur markets. The "raw" terror they have let loose resounds in the corridors of government as well as media power. Cutting to the chase,...

-The Hindu   A welter of problems may be in store for the country These are testing times for the Narendra Modi government in the farm and food sector: the south-west (June-September) monsoon is delayed, deficient and weak; kharif sowing, much of which is rain-fed, is lagging by over 17 per cent over last year; rising food prices are pushing up inflation and pulling down growth. Right now the prices of only perishable...

-The Business Standard   Unlike consumer prices, wholesale inflation provides little comfort If the consumer price index (CPI) numbers for May, released last week, provided some comfort about softening inflation, the wholesale price index (WPI) numbers for the same month, released on Monday, did just the opposite. Headline inflation went up from 5.2 per cent year on year in April to six per cent in May, the highest, by a whisker, since December....