The question raises fundamental issues about the MGNREGA’s centralised template and poor delivery mechanism, but it is important to provide a legal basis to its wage structure to protect it against inflation. We need to remember that the way the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was originally conceived, wages were never meant to be equal to the minimum wages; they should have been lower. This is because the...

Global food prices rose in December, with the FAO Food Price Index at a record high, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Wednesday, past 2008 highs when rising food prices sparked riots in a number of countries. Up for the sixth month in a row and fueled by surging sugar prices and rises in cereals and oils, the index was the highest since records began in 1990, in nominal...

The Food and Agricultural Organization said Wednesday that the world faces a "food price shock" after the agency's benchmark index of farm commodities prices shot up last month, exceeding the levels of the 2007-08 food crisis. The warning from the U.N. body comes as inflation is becoming an increasing economic and political challenge in developing countries, including China and India, and is starting to emerge as a potential problem in developed...

Agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan called on Wednesday for documenting indigenous farming knowledge which coped with monsoon vagaries. In earlier days when there was no irrigation, farmers were prepared for floods and Droughts. The climate-resilient farming was a way of life in those days, and people went in for mixed cropping. Dr. Swaminathan said a publication could be brought out on procedures adopted by farmers and how effective they were in coping with...

Scores of farmers staged a protest in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi city on Tuesday to protest against the government's acquisition of their lands. The agitating farmers also demanded proper compensation for their lands. "We want proper compensation for the lands that have been taken by the government, the lands which have been snatched from us. They have taken our wells, our tress; we want compensation for that or else give us land in...