Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...
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Inflation: What’s stifling your veggies by Zia Haq
An innovative mechanism to save farmers from exploiting traders, which India implemented as a national model in the 70s, is now being blamed for rising vegetable prices. Agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs) have become archaic and vegetables and fruits need to be taken out of these local market hubs, analysts say. “They have turned into platform for hoarders, rather than a buyer-seller platform,” farm expert Sompal, who was formerly union agriculture...
More »Hint of FDI in food retail by Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
The government is seriously considering minority foreign stake in food retail in the wake of the spurt in food prices. “FDI in (food) retail will lead to demand-driven farming and that can result in clusterised high-growth farming,” food processing minister Subodh Kant Sahay told the The Telegraph. Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar is believed to have gone even further — reportedly endorsing a proposal of the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP)...
More »New age of intervention in food prices by Rowena Mason
In India, people are upset about onions. Expensive cooking oil is causing hoarding in China, a practice banned by the government. Meanwhile, flour and bread are the main source of riots in Algeria and now Jordan. Worries over food prices are gathering pace and triggering alarm among politicians across the world. For there is nothing more likely to bring down a government than ignoring starving citizens, as Marie Antoinette found to...
More »New world order will see farmers and miners in charge by Garry White and Rowena Mason
“All these people who got MBAs made a mistake,” according to Jim Rogers, the commodities investor, at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit last month. “The City of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It’s going to be the people who produce real goods in charge – the farmers and the miners.” With commodities up 42pc since the beginning...
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