-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws.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...
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India’s fiction of victory at Bali - Biraj Patnaik
-Live Mint By giving in to pressure from the US and EU, India has landed itself and the developing world in a bad trade deal The stenographic cacophony in the Indian media had a singular triumphalist message from the ninth World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meet in Bali: India had secured a major victory by safeguarding its food security programme and stood its ground against the US and the European Union...
More »The truth of India’s position at Bali
-Live Mint The national food security law is in trouble from an unlikely source The outcome of the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit at Bali has been projected as a great victory for the Indian government by its spokespersons. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In exchange for a temporary reprieve on its food support programme, India has bartered away the bargaining chip of trade facilitation, which Western negotiators demanded. The...
More »Why beg at Bali? -Uttam Gupta
-The Indian Express India faces no risk of violating its commitments under WTO The Indian delegation, led by commerce minister Anand Sharma, is approaching the WTO Ministerial in Bali with a ‘begging bowl'. The government has agreed to the so-called ‘peace clause'-a euphemism for not taking any penal action for violating commitments under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)-proposed by WTO Director General but with the caveat that this will remain in place until...
More »A setback, say civil society groups-Gargi Parsai
-The Hindu India wilted under pressure from US: Right to Food Campaign Civil society groups are "extremely disappointed" about India accepting a peace clause with conditionality on its food and Farm subsidies at the Bali World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial with no assured mechanism for finding a permanent solution. They are unhappy that India has opened up its farm and food domestic policies, programmes and mechanisms to international scrutiny with large data and...
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