India's finance minister announced on Monday a food security bill for 2011/12, a measure that would provide cheap grains for millions of India's poor but which has sparked worries of a huge fiscal cost. It was one of the first signs of populism in the annual budget as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confronted high prices and corruption scandals as well as elections in five states this year. In his ongoing budget speech,...

The sharp rise in food prices inflation will remain a major cause of concern as inflationary pressures on the domestic front are likely to be exacerbated by higher levels of global commodity prices, the Economic Survey has said. It also indicated that the political turmOil in the Middle East and the “easy money” policy being followed by developed nations trying to jump-start their own economies after the global recession of 2008-09...

Food inflation moved up to 11.49 per cent for the week ended February 12 as compared with 11.05 per cent for the previous week even as prices of certain items fell marginally. Despite the increase, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said while inflation has been a concern for the last 18 months, it will come down to 7 per cent by the end of the current fiscal. According to the Wholesale...

The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater-clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches. But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from...

It’s not just the fibre and vitamins; wholegrain brown rice has a compound that may protect you from high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Replacing that familiar mound of white on your plate with a brown variety may do a world of good to your heart. Nutritionists have known for a while that brown rice is healthier, and been exhorting rice eaters to choose the wholegrain brown type instead of...