Fundamentally, our current crisis in food supplies as well as food prices arises out of the sidelining of Jawahar Lal Nehru’s dictum “everything else can wait but not agriculture”. Unfortunately, the last twenty years have been characterised by very low rates of agricultural growth, averaging around one percent per annum. This is almost equal to the rate of GDP growth during the last half century of British rule. In effect, in...

Fast-growing emerging nations are taking increasingly aggressive actions to beat back rising food prices as they grow more worried of threats to stability if prices don't start to retreat. Developing-market governments have unveiled a laundry list of measures—including price caps, export bans and rules to counter commodity speculation—to keep food costs from disrupting their economies as price spikes that some had hoped were temporary have stretched into the new year. Some...

The question raises fundamental issues about the MGNREGA’s centralised template and poor delivery mechanism, but it is important to provide a legal basis to its wage structure to protect it against inflation. We need to remember that the way the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was originally conceived, wages were never meant to be equal to the minimum wages; they should have been lower. This is because the...

Differences within the ruling government alliance over food management came to the fore on Tuesday with home minister P Chidambaram questioning agriculture minister Sharad Pawar's pitch for resuming export of sugar. A meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss measures to calm soaring food prices saw sugar become a key focus area with Pawar plumping for freeing its export, citing an expected bumper crop this year. As soon...

Twenty years ago, a Maruti 800, with an air-conditioner fitted, cost a little less than Rs 2 lakh. Today it costs about Rs 2.5 lakh. Twenty years ago, a branded 1.5 tonne window air-conditioner cost about Rs 30,000; today, you can get a split AC unit for that price. Then, Videocon was offering large refrigerators for more than Rs 30,000; you can get better units today for much less. TV...