The area under wheat this year has increased to 29.1 million hectares, compared to 28.2 million hectares in the corresponding period last year. Higher coverage is reported from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Sowing is marginally lower in West bengal. Production is expected to exceed last year's 80.17 million tonnes. According to data released by the Agriculture Ministry, the coverage of rabi crops is 51.92 million hectares, against 50.59...

If you thought only onion made headlines and governments fall, here is some more food for thought. The retail prices of brinjal soared 110% and those of tomato by 125% between the first weeks of November 2010 and January 2011, while the rise in crude oil paled in comparison, climbing about 12% in the same period. While import-dependent economies are struggling to keep their fiscal math in shape with crude...

The class bias in government policy is clear in the decision to release a small amount of foodgrain in the open market to tackle inflation. MOST people would agree that there is a strong element of speculation underlying the current inflation and that forward trading contributes to it. Yet the government, though it has banned forward trading in certain commodities under public pressure, is curiously reluctant to see this point....

The government’s bill for funding the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has risen steeply, due to its decision to revise wage rates under these projects and to link these to the inflation rate. The government had agreed to indexation, but not to activists’ demand to pay at each state’s set minimum wage rates, indexed to inflation. The wage rates continue to be delinked from the statutory minimums applicable; in many...

The heat generated by the high food inflation may force the government to go slow, or even drop, some of its key proposals to open up the country's food and fertiliser sectors, experts say. Decontrolling sugar and urea and freeing up some farm exports are some of the proposals the government may not touch in the coming days, they say. The proposal on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail may also...