-The Tribune The prices of essential food items have increased by 50% in seven years, whereas the real wage rate has risen by 22%. These figures show that inflation has outsmarted the real income of the poor, making their lives miserable as the food basket constitutes a substantial proportion of the total expenditure on the poor. The net effect is that the poor earn less and take loans to maintain the...

-The Telegraph  Jon Wakefield picks holes in Narendra Modi government’s twin claims Jon Wakefield was disappointed. India’s health ministry had issued a statement decrying the methodology adopted by the World Health Organisation to estimate excess deaths worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The exercise indicated 4.7 million excess deaths in India, 9.8 times the country’s official Covid-19 death toll. The ministry statement itself didn’t surprise Wakefield. Five times since July 2021,...

-The Telegraph The economic impact of heatwaves is steep India is feeling the heat in ways other than the rising prices. The ongoing heatwave, in which temperatures have shot above 45 degree Celsius in many parts of northwest and central India, highlights the rising climate risks and their attendant costs. Heatwaves, beginning earlier than in the past, are part of a changing climate whose defining features, in addition to the gradual rise...

-The New Indian Express But interestingly the procurement in both states is over. CHANDIGARH: The Centre has allowed relaxation in procurement norms for shrivelled wheat grains up to 18 per cent against the earlier specification of 6 per cent with any value cut for the central pool from both Punjab and Haryana. This, due to the abnormally High Temperatures. A letter written on Friday by Vishwajeet Haldar, Deputy Commissioner (Storage and Research Division) in...

-Down to Earth The full impact of the wheat ban on farmers will be known only in the next few days, say experts India’s sudden decision to ban wheat exports with immediate effect citing food security may prove costly for its farmers. Many of them have held back their crop in the hopes of getting higher prices in the coming weeks. The impact of this decision is already being seen in wheat mandis...