-The Times of India The Manmohan Singh government's mission in a pre-election year seems cut out: To check and roll back retail food inflation that rose from 4% in January last year to 13% in December, a trend that could blight its 2014 poll ratings. With food prices accounting for half of overall inflation, this group stayed above 10% most of last year, higher than the overall consumer price index figure of...

-The Telegraph Labour payments under NREGA will continue to be less than minimum wages for agricultural labourers in four states, including Bengal, despite a recent rate revision in the rural job scheme. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today tabled a statement in the Rajya Sabha on the revised wages that will take effect from next month. Under the new NREGA rates, labourers in all states stand to gain, except those in Kerala, Bengal,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Before I take issue with some of the points made in the NIPFP response to this comment, it may be useful to recapitulate a few points on which there appears to be agreement: (1) Aadhaar-integration can resolve only certain types of leakages, for which reliable data is unavailable; this was not adequately accounted for in the cost-benefit exercise; (2) the NIPFP study has a fragile basis (in...

-The Hindu Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget for 2013-14 will be remembered not only for its strategies to stimulate economic growth and control fiscal deficit, but also for the importance given to the needs of the underprivileged sections of our society. In the field of agriculture, he has adopted the following three pronged strategy: 1. Defend the gains already made in the original green revolution areas like Punjab and Haryana: For this purpose...

-The Business Standard For some people, travelling by train to their village 1,400 km away is a journey through hell. These are people who travel unreserved. Their suffering is all the more traumatic for being symbolic of the apathy of those who run the trains and the country. Saraswati Mondal, an illiterate domestic worker in Delhi, going to Murshidabad by Kalka Mail goes to New Delhi station, walks into a crowd of...