With the prices of most of the vegetables soaring, the Income Tax sleuths on Friday carried out massive raids on the offices and godowns of the wholesale traders in onion and garlic in major cities and towns of Gujarat. The outcome of the raids that started in the morning was not immediately known, but informed sources said the idea was to check whether the wholesalers were unduly holding stocks to take...

The economy shows consistent signs of growth. The challenge in the new year is to make development more equitable and broad-based… 2010 was a year of relief that soon grew into despondency. We were relieved that India had pulled out of the deepest post-War recession relatively unscathed. The soundness of its cautious macro-economic management was underlined once again and the US economy is also looking like getting slowly back on...

Organized retail of packed food and raw food reduces prices of food for urban citizens and pays farmers a better price for the agricultural produce. It eliminates middle men and decision making at every other level. This is not rocket science. However, politicians refuse to do away with the WWII public distribution system in order to retain power at the district level. Well, for one thing, the format of the...

If the price rise is due to production shortfall, how does one explain the near doubling of the price within a few days? The sharply rising onion prices have raised the suspicion that speculators are manipulating a shortage situation. First, a few facts. In retail markets, onion prices have soared from Rs 10-11 per kg in June to as high as Rs 70-80 on Dec 21. Even more significantly, prices zoomed by...

While China has made great economic and social progress in recent years, land degradation and the widening income gap between rural and urban are posing challenges to ensuring the right to food for its population, says an independent United Nations human rights expert. “Within a few decades, China has been able to feed itself and to feed one fifth of the entire world population. That is really impressive. Yet, considering a...