Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-Livemint.com The report also suggested revising pay under MGNREGS on the basis of Consumer Price Index for Rural (CPI-Rural) as the appropriate index New Delhi: The finance ministry has rejected a report by the rural development ministry, which recommended that wages under the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS) be made equal to or higher than the minimum wage determined by state governments. The report prepared by a panel headed by S....

-Frontline The inability to resolve pressing problems with respect to the production, distribution and availability of food is one of the important failures of the entire economic reform process. IN the fateful month of July 1991, when the devaluation of the Indian rupee presaged the introduction of a whole series of liberalising economic reforms, agriculture was very far from the minds of most policymakers and commentators. The immediate focus was on...

-The Hindu Widespread chewing, legendary paan shops and a ‘so-what’ attitude trump disease concerns. Chennai: Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda promised concerned members in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that he would advise all States to ban spitting in public. He was reassuring several MPs led by K.T.S Tulsi, who expressed worry that “the great Indian spit” was causing many communicable diseases. Yet, most municipal laws already prohibit spitting and prescribe penalties....

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Air and dust pollution from road traffic may be a threat to Kashmir's silk sector, already dogged by the lack of cocoon-processing infrastructure, declining production and farmers' abandonment of silkworm-rearing. Scientists at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and the Central Sericulture Research Institute, Pampore, have warned that traffic pollution may significantly reduce food consumption by silkworms and their capacity to spin the fibre. Field observations suggest that silkworms do...