-The Hindustan Times   Unacceptably high food prices are a result of slow and below-target farm growth, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday. Singh said the farm growth had been less than the targeted 4% and a “consequence in recent years has been unacceptable levels of food price inflation”. He said he expected the Twelfth Plan to contain all measures required to accelerate agricultural growth. Speaking at a function to mark the foundation...

On Monday, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, cleared a version of the food security Bill that accepts several provisions recommended by the Sonia Gandhi headed-National Advisory Council (NAC) and rejects some others. Predictably, public attention has concentrated on the latter. Unnoticed among the NAC recommendations that have been accepted by the government, therefore, lies a radical new proposal that has the potential to re-arrange...

A perverse, yet novel reason put forward to explain high inflation is that the poor are eating more as they are becoming less poor. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been extolled for being responsible for higher consumption, which in a way is a vindication of high inflation. The extended logic used here is that if the poor are eating more and we are paying high...

One lives to learn — or unlearn. The working head of what passes for this country’s Planning Commission is unambiguous about it. One important measure to fight inflation, he believes, is to raise prices. That is to say, to stop prices from rising, you must first raise prices. The gentleman has heartily endorsed the recent serial increases in the prices of petroleum products since such increases will, in his view,...

-Reuters   Red-hot food inflation that has vexed policy makers around the world seemed to take a breather last month, when corn and wheat prices tumbled on reports that crop shortages were easing. The sell-off was also driven by global economic worries that prompted funds to exit grains in droves. But prices are climbing again, and have already made up half of June's losses. The sell-off masked an unnerving reality: The world remains...