Food inflation soared to 17.05 per cent for the week ended January 22, rising for the second straight week, on the back of costlier vegetables, fruits and milk. Food inflation rose by 1.48 percentage points from 15.57 per cent in the previous week. The food inflation last year had stood at 20.56 per cent. On an annual basis, onion prices rose by 130.41 per cent in the third week of January,...

It is tragic that the same government that gives huge corporate concessions and loses money in corruption is fighting over minimum wages. As India's — and by some reckoning the world's — largest rights-based rural safety net programme completes five years, here is a reality check. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has become the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). But in a monumental affront to the...

Senior United Nations officials today called for urgent steps to rein in the rising prices for basic farm produce, petroleum and raw industrial materials whose volatility hits the world’s poorest people the hardest.     “Such volatility has huge negative impacts on vulnerable groups, such as low-income households in developing countries, for whom food expenditure can account for up to 80 per cent of household budgets,” UN Conference on Trade and Development...

Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude. Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of...

Between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union finance ministry and the army of economic advisors that surround Prime Minister Manmohan Singh no one seems to have a clue about how to get a grip over food inflation. Not only has the recent episode of high food prices seen surprisingly sharp spikes in the prices of vegetables and fruit but it has lasted longer than any other episode of inflation...