-PTI The agriculture sector performed exceedingly well in 2011, with record grain production of over 240 million tonnes giving enough leeway for the government to lift a ban on exports of wheat and non-basmati rice and introduce the food security bill in Parliament. Farmers’ long-standing demand for crop loans at a 4% rate of interest was met during the year, although with a rider that the facility would be available to...

-The Times of India In a follow-up action to the scathing CAG report on the sub-standard foodstuff and rations being provided to soldiers, the parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC) is said to have blasted the defence establishment and the Army for "deep-rooted and widespread malpractices". The PAC report, expected to be tabled in Parliament soon, conducted a detailed examination of last year's CAG report that punched several gaping holes in Army's entire...

-The Business Standard   Economists question veracity of the data; say too early for RBI to cut rates. Food inflation for the week ended December 10 fell to a four-year low of 1.81 per cent, after declining to 4.35 per cent last week. The decline is much sharper than what Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu expected — he had predicted less than three per cent food inflation by early January. What’s more, many...

-The Times of India   Even though the residents of Guwahati have to buy their greens at exorbitant rates, farmers in the countryside are living in dire straits as the price at which they sell the vegetables have touched rock bottom. Last week, farmers in Barpeta, one of the vegetable-producing districts of the state, had to jettison cartloads of cucumbers on the street when the price of the produce touched 60 paise per...

The central government claims that allowing foreign direct investment into India’s retail sector will benefit small farmers, expand employment and lower food inflation. What has been the experience in India with organised retail so far and what has been the global experience with FDI? Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iegindia.org) is currently at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. After being under relentless attack for a week, the United Progressiv Alliance government was forced to...