-The Times of India Retail inflation soared in February on the back of stubborn food prices sustaining pressure on consumers and complicating the policy choice for the central bank. Data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday showed the inflation rate based on all-India general CPI ( consumer price index) for February was 10.91% compared to 10.79% for the previous month. The inflation rates for rural and urban areas for...

-The Times of India The Manmohan Singh government's mission in a pre-election year seems cut out: To check and roll back retail food inflation that rose from 4% in January last year to 13% in December, a trend that could blight its 2014 poll ratings. With food prices accounting for half of overall inflation, this group stayed above 10% most of last year, higher than the overall consumer price index figure of...

-The Times of India There was no let up in bad news for the government on the economic front. Amid the debate over slowing economic growth, data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Tuesday showed industrial output fell 0.6% in December, posing fresh policy challenges. This is the second successive month of decline for factory growth which has remained anaemic due to a string of factors including high interest rates,...

-Inclusion.in There is good news. And there’s bad news. The good news first. There’s been a bumper wheat crop and the granaries are overflowing. And the bad news? Where do we begin? A lot of that grain will rot. Millions will still remain hungry. Heavily in debt and distressed, farmers are committing suicide. Food prices are soaring. There’s more… Farmers don’t have money. Their land is too small and isn’t yielding much. Fertilisers and...

-The Telegraph   Ashok V. Desai,consulting editor of The Telegraph and chief consultant to the finance minister when Manmohan Singh launched the economic reforms, takes a deep dive into statistics to figure out what is wrong with the economy as Pranab Mukherjee leaves the finance ministry and Singh takes charge The growth rate of gross domestic product is reported to have come down. What does that mean? Before the question can be answered,...