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 past several months have seen much tumult. From the Commonwealth Games (CWG) to 2G, with garnishing from the Adarsh housing cooperative and the loan fraud, all have provided high octane fodder to Indian politics and the media. However, since the last week of December 2010, another element has intruded into the political/media space, and that is the rising prices of vegetables. Vegetable prices show a seasonal variation, with prices dropping...

Even as the price of onions remained high in domestic retail markets, the National Cooperative Consumers Federation of India (NCCF) on Monday urged the government to suspend the import of the vegetable for 10 days, by when the prices are expected to fall due to better arrivals. “The recent import of onions from China and Pakistan has created panic among our farmers, and many of them have started harvesting the crop...

Economists across the world are expressing concern about rising food prices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released its Food Price Index. The list showed that a number of foods cost more than during the world food crisis of two thousand eight. The index is at its highest level since it began in nineteen ninety. Demonstrations and deadly food riots have broken out this month, as they did in...

The farmers in Madhya Pradesh are feeling devastated and over a half-a-dozen of them have even committed suicide in a short span of time in different parts of the state.   In the last one month, farmers have committed suicide in villages across Bhopal, Sehore, Chhindwara, Damoh, and Sagar districts. The farmers’ plight had surfaced in a big way when thousands of farmers under the banner of Bharatiya Kisan Sangh had converged...