Everyone agrees that there is a food crisis. As ordinary members of the public we know there’s one every time we go out shopping for vegetables. My mother knows there’s a crisis because, after recently sacking her cook, she discovered the lady had left with all the onions in the house. The media agrees there’s one, and sends more TV crews to talk to onion farmers, even though the TV reporters...

The Union government recently indexed the wages of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to the consumer price index for agricultural labour (CPI-AL). The step, aimed at boosting the purchasing power of workers, came in the midst of a controversy over the government not linking wages under MGNREGS to the minimum wage under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. The wage hike, ranging from 17-30%, is likely...

There is a suggestion circulating in the corridors of our apex monetary regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank of India, that food inflation is beginning to look more ‘structural’ than ‘seasonal’, and it can only be tackled by addressing the supply side. We need to address both demand and supply sides simultaneously to tackle food inflation. While we must be happy that more and more poor eat fruits and cook vegetables...

The only economic or social variable that has not moved since 1991 in India is our 93% informal employment in the informal sector. So, while we have smartly and substantially moved the needle on everything from foreign exchange reserves, infant mortality, school enrolment, market capitalisation, foreign investment, and pregnancy deaths, 9 out of 10 of our workers do not work in organised employment. Informal employment—what President Alan Garcia of Peru...

Organized retail of packed food and raw food reduces prices of food for urban citizens and pays farmers a better price for the agricultural produce. It eliminates middle men and decision making at every other level. This is not rocket science. However, politicians refuse to do away with the WWII public distribution system in order to retain power at the district level. Well, for one thing, the format of the...