-The Indian Express   Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao on Tuesday cautioned that policies — the significant increase in rural wages triggered by the MGNREGS and inflationary implications of the proposed Food Security Bill — aimed at inclusive growth can stoke inflationary pressures at any rate in the short-term. “The need for making growth inclusive is incontestable, but it is important to recognise that policies aimed at inclusion can stoke inflationary...

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia did a U-turn on the highly controversial Rs 32 per day poverty line, informing Prime Minister and plan panel chairman Manmohan Singh that caps on number of beneficiaries of schemes with central subsidies will be done away with. The about-turn comes after Ahluwalia's earlier letter to attorney general Goolam E Vahanvati in October defending the "artificial" cap Planning Commission imposes on beneficiaries of various...

Good sections of rural India don’t want NREGA any more, showing the government spending pattern on the scheme. Since a large percentage of the village labourers have moved to the cities, it makes far better sense to develop an unemployment dole for them. The subtext is an accounting arrangement that ensures that like NREGA, the government can keep on rolling out similar entitlement programmes like the proposed Food Security Act, but...

We see malnutrition as a burden on our conscience, and on our exchequer. We also know it is a daunting task to get rid of child malnutrition. But do we know about the economic benefits on the other side? A new FAO report tells us that India can increase its national income by a massive US$ 28 billion by eliminating child malnutrition. Now that is serious economic gain so read...

Several state governments have come out strongly against how the centre has planned the resource mobilisation for the national food security law, a key initiative of the UPA-II government. States including those ruled by the Congress party has complained to the Union food ministry that legal entitlements for subsidised grain to a large section of the population as envisaged in the Bill would put an enormous financial burden on them....