India expects a strong rebound in farm output, which will substantially reduce food price inflation that has soared since last year when the country’s worst drought in 37 years hit crops, the agriculture minister said. This year’s June-September monsoon was 16% below normal last month, but rainfall has revived significantly, calming fears of shortages and higher prices. India also needs to ease tight controls on the sugar sector, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar...

In the wake of runaway inflation and the ensuing food crisis, the prime minister constituted three high-powered committees of chief ministers and central ministers to recommend ways of containing inflation, improving PDS and boosting agricultural production. The Working Group on agricultural production was chaired by Haryana chief minister B S Hooda, with CMs of West Bengal, Punjab and Bihar as members. Tucked away, largely unnoticed by the Indian media, as...

The recent spike in world food prices has further widened the gap between the developed and the developing economies. While, over 70 per cent of the world's population resides in poor countries, it has access to less than 40 per cent of the world's resources such as water, irrigated land, power, etc. This is a result of inconsistent economic progress (post-colonialisation birth pangs), rampant population growth and distractions such as...

The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. There was irony in the timing of the petrol price decontrol order. The decision, which also covered major hikes in diesel and kerosene prices, and affects hundreds of millions of people, came even as Manmohan Singh advised world leaders in Toronto on the need...

In April, India’s Planning Commission accepted recommendations put forth by the so-called Tendulkar Committee on a new poverty headcount for the country. Constituted by the Planning Commission under economist Suresh D Tendulkar, the committee, after four years and a new methodology, arrived at a new figure for the number of Indians living below the poverty line: 37.2 percent, ten points higher than the previous official figure. With the government’s subsequent...