-Livemint.com According to NCDEX, over 25,000 small and marginal farmers from 13 FPOs have successfully hedged their crops on its trading platform in the past 10 months New Delhi: In a bumper crop year when farmers across the country have been battered by lower crop prices, farmers’ groups are using futures contracts to hedge against price dips during the harvest season. For instance, Samriddhi Mahila Crop Production Co. Ltd, a farmer-producer organization (FPO)...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Financial Express Persistence of high food inflation can harden the monetary policy stance and make fiscal choices difficult Food inflation increased to 7.9% in May 2016 as against 4.23% in April. This sudden spurt in food inflation is attributed to vegetable prices, followed by pulses and sugar. Is this a short-term spike or will it be a persistent one? If it is going to be a persistent one with pass-through effects,...

-The Indian Express Government must address the stress in the rural economy, seen in falling wages and incomes, which could reverse recent progress in rural areas Last year in February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had exhorted voters to vote for his party in the Delhi assembly election, claiming that his victory in the general election had brought luck to the country. Unfortunately, the voters of urban Delhi were not convinced and...

-The Financial Express Controlling food inflation seems to have pre-occupied the attention of the Modi government, at least for now, and it has succeeded in minimising the damage despite a poor monsoon. The Modi government had to hit the ground running as far as food and agriculture is concerned. With delayed and deficient rains in June and the spectre of El Nino, drought was looming large. Food inflation was stubbornly stuck at...