-Frontline Maharashtra’s sugarcane farmers are a worried lot as the State government backs out from the sugar pricing process.  Sangli & Kolhapur: KOLHAPUR and Sangli districts in Maharashtra form the heartland of Indian sugar industry. This time of year is generally the busiest, with itinerant labourers cutting sugarcane and loading it on to tractors that roar off to the more than 20 sugar factories in the two districts. In November and December,...

-The Business Standard Gas cylinder cap has lessons for the future  Of all the decisions that the United Progressive Alliance government took last week to end a long period of policy paralysis, the one that has caused the least provocation to opposition political parties is the annual capping of the supply of subsidised cooking gas cylinders. This is surprising, as its net effect on a householder’s annual budget will likely be substantial....

-The Business Standard Govt cannot delay increasing diesel, LPG prices Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy, speaking after a ministerial-level meeting on inflation on Monday, said that the government had no immediate plans to raise the administered prices of diesel, kerosene and domestic LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). This comes after oil marketing companies raised the price of petrol last week by Rs 7.50 per litre, an increase of 12 per cent. Mr Reddy’s...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

Singapore spot market, not production costs, driving Indian petrol price Have you ever wondered why when petrol prices go up or down they do so uniformly across the retail outlets of the three oil marketing companies — Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum? If they are three different companies with their own refineries and distribution systems, then surely their costs and selling prices must be different? Welcome to the strange world...