-The Indian Express While much of the world is seeing benign inflation trends, India is a clear exception. Among the drivers of headline inflation in India in recent months has been food prices, especially those of vegetables. With economic activity picking pace after the easing of lockdown measures, the recovery has thrown up some paradoxes: revival in employment amid a fall in labour force participation, surging inflation rate despite disinflationary impact from...

-Newsclick.in In 2006, chief minister Nitish Kumar scrapped the APMC Act in Bihar and the destructive effects can be seen in the seething anger amongst farmers. What the Narendra Modi government recently did through passing laws to deregulate agricultural trade, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had accomplished 14 years ago, in 2006. Soon after becoming chief minister in alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he scrapped Bihar’s Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC)...

-Livemint.com Wide disparities in agri-marketing regulations have resulted in fragmented markets across states. The new farm bills aim to change this but the jury is still out on whether it will have the intended impact. On 26 September, government procurement of food crops commenced across the country, five days in advance, following the enactment of three contentious farm bills. Under the new policy regime, farmers need not sell their produce through designated...

-Livemint.com * Market participation is meaningless without information. Should every Indian farmer get a smartphone? * Without internet connectivity and market intelligence, the transaction cost associated with selling in places outside the local market are higher than the value of the produce FATEHPUR: Kamlakant is a smallholder farmer in Daulatiyapur village of Fatehpur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is an enthusiastic vegetable cultivator and every season, he searches for answers to three basic...

-PTI/ The Hindu “Overall, the difference between wholesale and retail inflation is primarily due to supply-side factors which should decrease and therefore going forward even the retail inflation should ease,” Mr. Subramanian said. Attributing the rise in inflation to supply-side frictions, Chief Economic Adviser K V Subramanian has exuded confidence that retail inflation will come down in the days ahead with the easing of lockdowns. According to the government data, retail inflation rose...