If dal roti went out of reach for the aam admi in 2009, vegetables and onion prices brought tears towards the end of 2010 and with food inflation touching a high of 14.44 per cent for the week ending December 18, the New Year did not ring in any respite from high food prices. The sudden increase of Rs.3 per litre in the price of petrol in December — the sixth...

From onions, sugar and coconuts, to tea, pulses, rice and spices, all kitchen ingredients will remain expensive in the New Year as unseasonal rains beyond the monsoon wipe out India’s major crops. Worse, rains are hampering the sowing of winter wheat, coarse grains and Oilseeds, putting further pressure on food inflation that touched a two-and-a-half month high at 14.44% on Thursday. Across the country, farmers are helplessly watching their fields turn into...

On the National Conference on Oil Palm at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh (the largest producer in the country), Mr. M.C. Rao, palm Oil farmer, Gajapati district, Orissa, stated, “Just like several Government agricultural departments, officials at the conference painted a false, bright, and positive picture about the prospects of the Oil palm plantation for farmers taking up this cultivation.” “As usual the policy makers miserably failed to read the pulse of...

NRHM needs to revitalise systems, monitor their functional performance and investigate their impact on the indices of health. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in 2005 to bring about a dramatic improvement in the health system and health status of people in rural India. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It aims at making architectural corrections to basic...

Food prices globally are rising to dangerous levels. There is talk of a coming crisis, like the ones that produced riots around the world in 2008 and 1974. Many of the ingredients of a disaster are present, but governments can stop the problem before it causes too much damage. A warning sign is the price of traded staples like wheat, corn and rice. Prices shot up in 2010, soaring 26...