As food prices rose for the seventh month in a row in January, contributing to recent popular unrest in the Middle East and a spike in commodities purchases by developing countries last week, some analysts are quick to make comparisons to the dry years of 2007-2008. But others warn against panic and oversimplified predictions of an impending food crisis, which contribute to price volatility. "It is important to underline – and we've...

It is time for us to take a hard look at our agricultural system. We are not yet reliving the food crisis of 2007-08 , but food prices are surging, with global prices for wheat and maize rising by 75% and 60%, respectively, from June to December 2010. Meanwhile, nearly 1 billion people worldwide are going hungry. The obvious solution to many of our food-related ills is to accelerate agricultural growth....

THE WORLD BANK IN INDIA - Undermining Sovereignty, Distorting Development: Edited by Michele Kelley, Deepika D'Souza; Orient Blackswan, 3-6-752, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad-500029. Rs. 895. This book is a collection of essays covering an array of economic issues ranging from agriculture, poverty, food security, power, water, to governance, environment impact and sustainability of growth, and the impact of the World Bank on them. Even a cursory reading would show that it is a...

There are many critics and sceptics with respect to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which came into being because of political pressure that managed to overcome quite strenuous opposition from some of the most influential policy making circles. It is likely that much of this criticism is not really because of the declared reasons, like fiscal costs (which are thus far very little) and potential leakage. Rather,...

The European Commission’s decision to exclude two key ozone-depleting gases from the purview of carbon trading from 2013 would have negative implications for global warming. The two industrial emissions marked for this purpose are Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23), essentially trifluoromethane, and nitrous oxide. These are highly potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) that together account for the bulk of the trade under the EU’s emission trading system, which is, by far, the world’s largest...