Food price inflation, and inflation in general, has become less of an issue. But it isn’t an issue that will go away. Give it till June and inflation is likely to inch up again. Competition is a good antidote against price increases. It ensures efficiency and reduces price volatility. Logically, food price inflation should trigger and stimulate agricultural reform, so there is competition and supply-side changes can occur. But in...

-The Economic Times "We have no power." That's the message from India's most powerful - ministers in the central government's Cabinet - when asked to list the discretionary authority each enjoyed. Only one ministry concedes that it has some discretionary powers, which it is eager to shed.  Prodded by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, a group of ministers (GoM) has the job of finding the discretionary powers enjoyed by each ministry and prune...

The alleged incident of two quarry workers in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district being forced to swallow faeces draws attention to larger issues. NORMALLY the villages and hamlets in and around Thiruvakkarai in Tamil Nadu's Villupuram district are woken up by the loud noise and vibrations caused by the blasting of rocks and the pounding of boulders with sledge hammers, apart from the rattling sound of tipper lorries transporting stones from 40-odd...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

The Madhya Pradesh government beefs up its saffron agenda with a “draconian” law. “IT is a contest between the two. The holy by-lanes of old Bhopal, which houses two of the largest mosques in Asia, the Taj-ul-Masjid and the Jama Masjid, were under attack from the holy cow,” said an activist of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), in a tone which he thought was in good humour, when asked about...