-The Business Standard   The government needs counter cyclical policies to tackle vegflation, which has become a recurrent problem Somebody help. Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley are held hostage, not by jihadists, recalcitrant opposition, international capital or the ever-erratic monsoon, but by faceless, nameless manipulators of Nasik, Navi Mumbai and Azadpur markets. The "raw" terror they have let loose resounds in the corridors of government as well as media power. Cutting to the chase,...

-The Hindu Business Line   Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (The more things change the more they remain the same ): A French proverb. In its earnest to tackle rising Food inflation the new Government has taken a welcome initiative to delist fruits/ vegetables including onions (FVO) from the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, while all other measures are as usual - short term of political expediency, repeated several...

-The Hindu   Salt workers toil under inhuman conditions to create the ingredient that converts a tasteless lump of calories into consumable tasty Food Salt has played an iconic role in our freedom struggle, symbolised by the great salt satyagraha of 1933, led by Mahatma Gandhi at Dandi. Every child in India knows about this but how many know that a similar satyagraha was led in the Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu) by...

-The Hindu   Agriculture activities come to a standstill in Gulbarga Karnataka: It has been an agonising wait for farmers in Gulbarga district. After a gap of several years, the district faces the bleak prospect of losing the chance to take up sowing of green and black grams, soyabean and sesame this year because of inordinate delay in the onset of the monsoon. As per the details available with the Agriculture Department on Monday,...

-Down to Earth   UN agency's latest state of the forests report says poverty alleviation and rural employment should be the ulterior driving force in amending old forest policies Recognising the role of forests in providing livelihood to people, UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has asked nations to formulate people-centric forest policies. "It is time for forestry to shift perspective from trees to people," says FAO's annual "The State of the World's...