Nobody in government should be surprised that sugar is selling at nearly Rs 50 a kg, possibly the highest it has reached in history. The supply-side causes have been visible for months. Last year’s patchy monsoon, of course, had an effect on the size of the domestic sugarcane crop; and, meanwhile, across the world in Brazil, extra-heavy rain has hit its production. Consequently, traders worldwide have been gearing up for...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...

Government sat on grain stocks while food prices shot up   In july 2008, when inflation rose to a 10-year high of 11 per cent and industry was hit by a range of factors, including economic recession, the Union government responded immediately. There were day-on-day monetary interventions. Since July 2009, inflation, as calculated by the prices poor consumers pay for their daily needs, has hovered around 11 per cent, again a 10-year...

The government’s expectation of the rabi wheat crop making good the shortfall in the drought-affected kharif season has received a setback with a lower acreage in wheat, coarse cereals and oilseeds this season. The sowing of pulses, however, is 6.2 per cent higher than last year in the corresponding period. The sowing period ends around January 15. The sowing of rabi wheat, coarse cereals and oilseeds has fallen behind last year,...

What sets poverty in India apart is the effort that has gone into defining, measuring, recalibrating, contesting, recounting, refining and disputing its magnitude, nature and, at least, in the case of one protagonist, existence. This exegesis on poverty has been captured in a World Bank volume, The Great Indian Poverty Debate, published before the latest estimates by Prof Suresh Tendulkar kicked off yet another round of heated discussion on the...