Fog not only delays trains and flights, causes road accidents and makes the winter season depressing but also causes the prices of eggs to rise. The recent increase in egg prices is attributed to fog and the prices are likely to increase again as soon as the visibility drops. To add to that, onions and tomatoes are also becoming more expensive. According to Shabir Ahmed, secretary, Poultry Federation of India, eggs...

If dal roti went out of reach for the aam admi in 2009, vegetables and onion prices brought tears towards the end of 2010 and with food inflation touching a high of 14.44 per cent for the week ending December 18, the New Year did not ring in any respite from high food prices. The sudden increase of Rs.3 per litre in the price of petrol in December — the sixth...

From onions, sugar and coconuts, to tea, pulses, rice and spices, all kitchen ingredients will remain expensive in the New Year as unseasonal rains beyond the monsoon wipe out India’s major crops. Worse, rains are hampering the sowing of winter wheat, coarse grains and oilseeds, putting further pressure on food inflation that touched a two-and-a-half month high at 14.44% on Thursday. Across the country, farmers are helplessly watching their fields turn into...

With three small children to raise in a dirt-poor village in eastern India’s Bihar state, farm labourer Renu Devi is an unsung rural supermom who shuttles between home and field every day. But the demure 30-year-old mother does not forget to bring her children to the biannual Vitamin A rounds in Bagwanpur Rati, one of the villages in Vaishali district of Bihar. This is because Vitamin A deficiency is a major...

“Take again Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. Now so far as I am concerned that particular section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in anv body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” —Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in Parliament during debates on the first amendment to...