Curbing inflationary expectations is the priority Food price inflation has been in double digits for almost a year. Officially this week it is clocking up 20 per cent, the highest in 11 years. Stories of inflation in pulses and vegetables have appeared repeatedly in newspapers all over the country. The minimum support price for wheat has more than doubled in the past three years. The sugarcane farmers invaded the roads of...

Food prices in India have risen to a high of nearly 20% over last year, the highest rate in a decade. The federal finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has said the government was planning to import food to ease prices. A short supply of food due to lower farm produce following drought and floods has led to the rising prices. Overall inflation in India has risen to 4.78% in November, up from...

India needs to initiate a number of steps to manage the emerging situation.  After three consecutive good years, agricultural production has faltered in the last two years. There was a fall in production to the tune of 1.6 per cent in 2008-2009 compared to the previous year. This year, again, agricultural production is likely to be down by 2 per cent or more. The deceleration in the growth of foodgrain...

The rise in the price of sugar, pulses and some vegetables that were in short supply pushed inflation up in November to 4.78 per cent, souring investor sentiments in the stock market. The wholesale price-based inflation jumped to five per cent from 1.34 per cent in October, according to the monthly inflation data released on Monday. ...

As agriculture universities transform local varieties into genetically modified Bt brinjal, questions of ownership arise. Indians call it the brinjal. Other countries know it as the eggplant or aubergine. It is widely used the world over and every cuisine from the Chinese to the African has an encyclopaedia of recipes that establishes its popularity as a vegetable of daily use. And no vegetable has hogged the headlines as much as the...