After easing a bit in the previous week, food inflation was back to near-20% levels in the third week of December as items such as potatoes and pulses continued to belie hopes of sustained relief over prices of essential commodities. The wholesale price-based index of food articles rose by 1.18% for the week ended December 19 from 18.65% a week ago. One week before that, food inflation had stood at...

Insufficiency and prescribing medicines from outside continues  CRM draws attention to ‘irrational’ use and non-availability of essential medicines Supplies are mostly top-down, based on availability instead of being demand-based No State provides free medicines to below the poverty line (BPL) patients under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). “The insufficiency of drugs and thereby the imperative of prescribing medicines from outside continue widely. This could also be linked to insufficiency of understanding...

Fiscal slowdown has not affected India much  Forecasting a brighter future for the country’s economy by 2009-10 end, C. Rangarajan, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister, said that if a consistent growth of four per cent in agriculture and nine per cent in the industrial and services sectors were maintained over the next two decades, it would propel India into the comity of developed nations. In a talk on...

THANTIRAYANKUPPAM, INDIA — Five years ago, I woke up on a Sunday morning, checked the news online and saw that a tsunami had hit my part of the world. Early reports were sketchy. I read about just a few casualties (in Sri Lanka, as I recall), and I remember thinking that the whole thing sounded exciting. I went down to the beach, about a 15-minute drive from my house. I walked...

The following piece was written for the UNIDO’s General Conference that took place in Vienna this month but could not be carried by any of the international papers because of a sLIGht delay, although some feel its contents may not be ideologically palatable to them. Hence it is being carried here for the benefit of our readers. —Editor A highly positive sum game awaits the community of nations if an internationally...