Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...
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From plate to plough: Seeds of change - Shweta Saini & Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express On Independence Day, we salute our freedom fighters. We also remember Lal Bahadur Shastri who gave us the slogan, jai jawan, jai kisan. PM Modi needs to move from slogans to action to transform agriculture. Atal Bihari Vajpayee expanded the slogan to jai jawan, jai kisan, jai vigyan. The present government has an array of slogans for the farmers. Prime Minister Modi has coined so many — swacchh bharat,...
More »Double-whammy: inflation is rising, factory output is falling
-The Hindu Business Line June IIP up, but manufacturing grows just 0.9%; retail inflation hits 6.07% in July New Delhi: A barely growing manufacturing sector and a surging inflation dealt a double-whammy to the economy. Retail inflation surged to 6.07 per cent in July, overshooting the government and central bank’s comfort zone of 5 per cent, even as manufacturing growth remained almost standstill at 0.9 per cent in June. Yet, the Index of Industrial...
More »The dynamic nature of poverty -Sonalde Desai & Amit Thorat
-The Hindu We need to rethink social safety nets in India’s growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth. Sometimes the grand narratives of the Left and the Right do not seem to have any relationship with the lived experiences of ordinary Indians. For the past two decades, the Left has tried to expand social welfare programmes for the...
More »From plate to plough: The arhar challenge - Ashok Gulati & Smriti Verma
-The Indian Express The incentive structure, currently skewed in favour of rice and wheat, needs to become crop-neutral High prices of pulses are upsetting the food budget of many poor families. Soaring retail prices of dals — urad at Rs. 170/kg, tur/arhar at Rs160/kg, gram/chickpea at Rs 127/kg, moong at Rs 111/kg and masoor at Rs 100/kg — have made dal a luxury for the dal-bhaat and dal-roti eating population. But not...
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