-The Indian Express For tomato, however, the difference jumped from 4 per cent on July 8 to 100 per cent on August 8. A month after the central government brought onions and potatoes under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, and empowered states to put stockholding limits on these vegetables to rein in hoarders, the difference between their wholesale and retail prices has not reduced. And in the case of other kitchen staples such...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Agriculture Cumulative rainfall till 05.08.2014 was 405.3 mm which is 19% less than normal or Long Period Average (LPA) of 499.3 mm. As per information provided by IMD, out of 620 districts for which rainfall data is available, 251 (40%) have so far received normal/excess rainfall. State Governments are empowered to initiate appropriate relief measures in the wake drought from funds readily available under State Disaster Response...

-The Telegraph In her recent book, Green Wars, the environmental journalist Bahar Dutt, writes: "The editor of a leading media house, everytime I pitched a green story, would invariably complain: ‘Environmentalism is stalling growth; all I am interested in is double-digit growth for this country.'" The idea that environmental protection and economic progress are at odds is widely held among India's elite. It is shared by newspaper editors, economists, businessmen, and, not...

-The Financial Express World Bank's latest data suggests realisation of millenium development goals may not be far off. Reduction of poverty and hence, how it is measured, has long been a contentious political economy issue in India. There is general discomfort every time the headcount ratio of the number of poor, based upon an accepted methodology recommended by an expert committee, declines; this then triggers a process to revisit known issues by...

-The Asian Age In India and around the world, poverty is predominantly rural. Development agencies often note that 75 per cent of the world's extremely poor people - those who earn less than $1.25 a day - live in rural areas. New figures from the 2014 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures overlapping dimensions of deprivation, show that rural poverty rates are even higher in some regions. In South Asia, the...