India’s vital monsoon rains revived in the soybean-growing central region on Thursday, after a two-week lag that reduced June rainfall to 16% below normal, the second lowest in 15 years. Heavy showers in the central Madhya Pradesh state would accelerate soybean planting in the world’s top importer of edible oils and ease growing nervousness about monsoon rains. The weather office reaffirmed its prediction of a normal monsoon this year, in line with...

A combination of unfavourable atmospheric patterns have delayed the revival and further advance of the monsoon which has not moved to cover more of the subcontinent for over 12 days. While the monsoon had covered half the country by mid-June, its northern limit has not shifted since June 18. It is currently passing through Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Indore, Pendra, Daltonganj, Gaya and Muzaffarpur. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had predicted last Friday that...

The Union budget estimates the nominal rate of growth for the Indian economy to be 12.5 per cent during the current fiscal. While it is impossible to figure out the manner in which this number was arrived at, the government has predicted further that the inflation-adjusted real growth rate for the same year will be eight per cent. Simple arithmetic requires that the difference between the nominal and real growth...

Conservatives appeared to trump the “radicals” as the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council met today to consider revolutionary suggestions to widen the content and targets of a proposed “right to food” law. The food rights campaigners in the council wanted a targeted public distribution system (PDS) to cover all except the affluent, providing not just cheap cereals but also other requirements of nursing mothers, children, the aged and the physically challenged. The...

SUKHRAM Gopal, a farmer from Bagli village in Devas district in Madhya Pradesh, relies on gut feel and tradition to be doubly sure that the rains will bless him with a bountiful harvest. On the day of the Gangaur festival, which typically falls in March-April and is a celebration of the monsoon and harvesting, Gopal starts sowing wheat. “Nine days later, if the seeds grow in a uniform manner, we...