Food price inflation, and inflation in general, has become less of an issue. But it isn’t an issue that will go away. Give it till June and inflation is likely to inch up again. Competition is a good antidote against price increases. It ensures efficiency and reduces price volatility. Logically, food price inflation should trigger and stimulate agricultural reform, so there is competition and supply-side changes can occur. But in...

It’s not just the NCTC — we need to provide a statutory basis and oversight mechanisms for all our intelligence agencies   The protest by eight chief ministers, characterising the Union government’s decision to give powers of search and arrest to the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC ) under Section 43 (a) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967 as an assault on federalism, comes in the wake of a “sticky bomb”...

Dr Abhijit Sen is Member, Planning Commission of India. He is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge (currently on leave as Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University) and has also taught at the Universities of Sussex, Oxford and Cambridge. Besides serving various think tanks in the states and at the centre, Dr Sen has been a consultant with UNDP, ILO, FAO and various other multilateral...

An average Indian uses less than half the amount of water consumed by an average American, but India is the world’s largest net virtual water Exporter, using more domestic water resources for Export products than any other country, says a study. India’s per capita water consumption is 1,089,000 litres per year, while the average US consumer uses 2,842,000 litres, but trade leaves India with a net virtual water Export of 95,000...

The huge expenditure on the food bill, with the attendant leakages, could well make fiscal recovery impossible In the first part of this article, we have estimated the actual cost of implementing the food security bill in its current form. In this part, we now examine the fiscal sustainability of the same. The current state of the revenue and expenditure trends of the Central government (refer table) show that while revenue...