A thriving black market in kerosene, estimated to be worth Rs 10,000 crore every year, killed additional collector Yeshwant Sonawane. A litre of kerosene sold at ration shops is often costlier than a bottle of packaged water. Most of this "poor man's fuel" is pilfered and sold in the black market for a price that's two or three times higher. It's really money for jam. Sonawane tried to meddle with this...

This week’s good news on food price inflation was evened out by the bad news on fuel prices hike. But, both were along expected lines. Thanks to the so-called “base effect” — the fact that last year this time food prices were rising sharply and since last year’s prices become the denominator in this year’s price ratio, the rate of inflation would be expected to moderate — and to an...

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...

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has highlighted that over 20% of the global population or 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity, which hinders economic and social development. Here in India, the grim reality is that almost half the population in rural areas has little or no supply of power. For long years, open-ended subsidies in power have mostly been diverted and usurped by the undeserving non-poor. Fortunately, social, managerial and...

To avoid a big burden on the exchequer from the proposed food security law, the Planning Commission will propose some key changes to the plan, including a virtual abandonment of the concept of universal public distribution system (PDS) endorsed by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in a presentation to Gandhi later this week would suggest that under the proposed scheme, grain be...