India’s food and fuel price inflation eased in early June, easing pressure on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to speed up its process of tightening monetary policy. India’s food price index rose 16.12% in the year to 5 June, snapping a two-week rise, and lower than the previous week’s annual reading of 16.74%, government data released on Thursday showed. The fuel price index climbed 13.18%, compared with an annual rise of 14.23%...

Umesh Kumar and his wife Satvati Devi were woken in the middle of the night by loud cries coming from the neighbouring house. "She was crying loudly. She was pleading, 'Kill me, but please don't hurt him.' She loved him and they wanted to get married," Ms Devi tells me. Two days after teenage lovers Asha and Yogesh were brutally killed, Swaroop Nagar colony on the north-western outskirts of the...

Food inflation may increase further in the coming weeks, but there is no cause for alarm as the rise is more the result of the low-base effect, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahulwalia said on Wednesday. As of May 29, food inflation stood at 16.74 per cent. “It is quite possible that when the data comes out on Thursday, you may see a little increase in food inflation. That...

Bhopal marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power.  Over 20,000 killed. Over half a million victims maimed, disabled or otherwise affected. Compensation of around Rs.12,414 per victim on average on the 1989 value of the rupee. ($470 million or Rs.713 crore. And that divided among 574,367 victims.) Over a quarter-of-a-century's wait. To see seven former officials of Union Carbide...

The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Tuesday approved a scheme for providing highly subsidised sanitary napkins to adolescent girls in the rural areas to promote menstrual hygiene. The scheme, to be launched in 150 districts across the country in the first phase, will cost Rs.150 crore for the current financial year. Approved by the Mission Steering Group – the highest decision-making body – of the National Rural Health...