-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, has a difficult task this week. He has to decide whether to keep interest rates constant or raise them - bearing in mind the possible taper of the US Fed's bond buying programme, a decline in industrial production and a rise in inflation. The sharp increase in consumer price-based inflation, to more...

-The Hindu     States that increase minimum wage will have to bear extra cost from their own resources A committee set up by the Ministry of Rural Development to revise wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has offered suggestions that are likely to iron out long-standing issues relating to disparity in earnings under the scheme. Currently, MGNREGA wages are lower than the minimum wages in several States, including in...

-The Business Standard Politics of populism will impact the government's fightback against inflation Mumbai: With the benefits of Food Security Bill failing to kick in, government is back to playing the card which many claim helped it win the previous election. It is looking to make a substantial hike in wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), according to a latest report by Economic times. A panel...

-The Business Standard The structural changes in India's rural workforce Seldom in the past has the country's labour market gone through structural changes faster than it has in recent years. Apart from a sharp decline in the proportion of workers employed in agriculture, the perceptible withdrawal of women from the workforce is the most striking feature of India's labour market. Going by the numbers the census and the National Sample Survey Office...

-Live Mint NSSO data show that slower pace of jobs creation between 2004-05 and 2011-12 reflects a fall in distressed farm employment Tracing the pace of new jobs created in an economy, a key electoral issue, is a good indicator of inclusive and balanced growth. But in a developing country such as India, the nature of new employment is often as important as the total number of jobs created. The changes...