The new rabi grain pricing policy seems to have been influenced more by macro-concerns about food inflation management rather than any considerations relating to food production planning. The marginal increase in minimum support prices (MSPs) of most rabi crops, barring pulses, is understandable given the government’s focus on inflation reduction and the fact that this marginal increase comes on top of earlier hikes of a decent magnitude. Moreover, there are...

India's power revolution seems to have run out of steam due to transmission and distribution losses. The country is losing a huge quota of power to faulty distribution networks and power theft every year. The losses, experts say, are currently 29 %of the total generation, which equals a shocking Rs 45,000 crore in the fiscal year 2009-10 . The drop in losses since 2001 is a negligible 3% . President...

The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser.  What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...

Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah on Tuesday announced that 10,000 remote villages across the country would be electrified with renewable Energy sources by March 2012 under an innovative initiative that will also generate employment. “We will provide electricity to 10,000 villages at the cost of Rs. 500 crore by the end of the current plan period,” Dr. Abdullah said, while addressing a press conference to mark the...

In a few days from now, women could account for 52 per cent of all local bodies. They are tailors, farmers, accountants, legal clerks, homemakers, vendors and activists. There are M.Com degree holders alongside poor women from deprived backgrounds. Together, they make up the most highly educated women candidates fighting local body elections anywhere in the country. There are nearly 40,000 of them contesting the polls across more than 1,200...