Planning Commission, RBI officials hold brainstorming deliberations with experts With the persistent near double-digit headline inflation, despite sustained increases in key policy rates by the Reserve Bank of India, turning out to be “a frustrating experience for policymakers,” senior officials from the Planning Commission, the Finance Ministry and the RBI met with a group of academic economic experts and representatives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the...

The new rural development minister wants to use technology to force states to make payments. Critics suggest that he should fix existing problems first. Jairam Ramesh is not afraid of stirring things up. Sixty days into his stint as the new Rural Development Minister, Ramesh, he has unveiled what he calls NREGA 2.0, a reform package that he feels would make the Rs 40,000 crore programme actually work. Ramesh has put together...

Managing our soil and water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner needs a new political vision, which can be expressed through the proposed Land Acquisition Bill and the recently formed Global Soil Partnership. On the basis of a proposal I had made three years ago, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched a Global Soil Partnership for Food Security and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation at a multi-stakeholder conference, held...

-The Business Standard   Demand-side control cannot be an answer beyond a point to India’s persistently high food price inflation, the World Bank said on Monday. Consumer price-based food inflation in India has been at 10-20 per cent for quite a long while, noted its report on ‘Food inflation in South Asia’. The Bank’s chief economist for the region, Kalpana Kochhar, said controlling inflation in India was a difficult job for the Reserve Bank...

Karnataka finds large-scale violations of state laws in its three districts. Karnataka has imposed Rs 140 crore in penalties on 13 iron ore mining companies in Tumkur for encroaching on government land and dumping mineral waste, thereby causing damage to the environment. “We have conducted a suo motu joint survey with the departments of mines and geology, forest and revenue in Tumkur district and found that 13 iron ore mining companies have...