-The Times of India Retail inflation soared in February on the back of stubborn food prices sustaining pressure on consumers and complicating the policy choice for the central bank. Data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday showed the inflation rate based on all-India general CPI ( consumer price index) for February was 10.91% compared to 10.79% for the previous month. The inflation rates for rural and urban areas for...

-The Times of India The Manmohan Singh government's mission in a pre-election year seems cut out: To check and roll back retail food inflation that rose from 4% in January last year to 13% in December, a trend that could blight its 2014 poll ratings. With food prices accounting for half of overall inflation, this group stayed above 10% most of last year, higher than the overall consumer price index figure of...

-The Business Standard Relative price changes across food items may impinge on long-term food security Rising food prices have been a significant driver of inflation in India over the past few years. In early 2008, there was a global surge in food prices, which certainly had an impact on the domestic situation. But, this subsided in a few months. Since then, the pressures seem to have been predominantly internal. If these trends...

-The Times of India The bad news is hidden inside the good news. Seemingly comforting headlines tell us that inflation has hit a three-year low, with wholesale price increases slowing down to 7.2% in December. But the common man will take a hit with prices of food products shooting up by 11.2% - the highest increase in almost two years. Unlike in previous years, when increasing food prices were attributed to...

-The Business Standard Govt's unbalanced food policy has disastrous results Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world’s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even...