-The Business Standard Govt's unbalanced food policy has disastrous results Consider the following discrepancies in the farm sector. The country is now the world’s largest exporter of rice, a crop grown with huge quantities of scarce water and heavily subsidised fertilisers. At the same time, it is the leading importer of pulses, which require very little water to grow and fortify the land with nitrogen to reduce the fertiliser need even...

-The Economic Times India's consumer prices climbed 10.56 per cent in December from a year earlier. This will hold the RBI's rate-cutting hand and prove politically painful for the government. The increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), over three percentage points more than the increase in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) number, is due to a spurt in prices in the food and beverage category - mainly vegetables, oils and fat,...

-Economic and Political Weekly The recent debate on the acceptability of foreign direct investment in the retail sector in India has been mostly political. It is necessary to look into the pros and cons of FDI in retail from a purely economic point of view. This article identifi es the safeguards that should be undertaken before allowing giant multinationals to function in the country. Abhirup Sarkar (abhirup@isical.ac.in) is with the Indian Statistical...

-Outlook The agriculture sector witnessed record foodgrains output of 257.44 million tonnes in this year enabling the country to become world's largest rice exporter for the first time, but the monsoon played spoilsport dashing farmers' hopes of an encore in 2013. A hefty increase of Rs 1 lakh crore in farm credit target to Rs 5.75 lakh crore was a major highlight for the sector in 2012, while the continuing farmers suicide...

-The Hindu DHARWAD: Vice-Chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Dharwad, R.R. Hanchinal said the research conducted by scientists from the university had proved that organic farming ensured more productivity than chemical farming in rain-fed areas. Presiding over the inaugural session of the two-day State-level workshop on ‘Plant protection in organic farming’ on the university campus here on Tuesday, Prof. Hanchinal said the outcome of a recent comparative study on organic...