A notification expected on January 1 to hike wages of workers under the national job guarantee scheme — to counter inflation — is stuck because of pressure from National Advisory Council activists who want this hike to be linked to the Minimum Wages Act. The Rural Development Ministry was slated to notify revised NREGS wages indexing it to the Consumer Price Index for agricultural labourers (CPI-AL) with April 2009 as the...

There is a suggestion circulating in the corridors of our apex monetary regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank of India, that food inflation is beginning to look more ‘structural’ than ‘seasonal’, and it can only be tackled by addressing the supply side. We need to address both demand and supply sides simultaneously to tackle food inflation. While we must be happy that more and more poor eat fruits and cook vegetables...

The Indian economy is moving back into the fast lane, with agriculture playing a leading role. A new financial review presented by the government in mid-December anticipated economic growth of up to 9% for the year to March 2011, and forecasters believe double-digit expansion is on the cards for later in the year. "Faster growth is expected to continue as agriculture recovers sharply from last year's drought and inflation starts to...

Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we...

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...