President Pratibha Patil today reaffirmed the government’s resolve “to maintain the momentum for reforms on a wide front”, prompting policymakers to outline the possible economic agenda ahead of the budget just a week away. Top officials offered their take on the phrase, mentioned in Patil’s speech to Parliament at the start of the budget session. According to the them, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee are looking to...

Surinder Mahato is a worried man. A small farmer on the outskirts of Bihar's capital Patna, he laboured throughout last year's drought to ensure that his farm's output of rice was not affected. But he now stares in distress at the stacks of paddy lying in his hut. 'I am waiting to sell my crop, but due to the government negligence, I am forced to sell at throwaway prices to local...

After increasing slowly and steadily from historic lows, world rice prices tripled in just six months during 2007-08. The price surge caused much anxiety because so many of the world’s poor are rice consumers. And it caught many by surprise as market fundamentals were sound. Indeed, it was government policies, rather than changes in the production and consumption of rice, that drove the surge. This suggests that improved government policies...

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...

The countrywide share of corporate retail in food distribution tripled in the past four years when retail food prices showed the greatest increase. THE dramatic increase in food inflation over the past two years has been associated with several surprises. One major surprise has been how the top economic policymakers in the country have responded to it. The initial response was one of apparent disbelief, followed very quickly by the...