Food-price inflation in India, Asia’s third-largest economy, may accelerate in the second half as farmers are paying 20 percent more to grow crops, according to the commission that helps set minimum farm-product prices. “The cost of production is going up very fast,” Ashok Gulati, chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “The labor cost has gone up dramatically in the past one year...

What is rural and what is urban is largely an artefact of definition and relative. See the table below. Most of India's 'rural' population resides in villages that contain between 500 and 5,000 inhabitants. Some argue that in other countries, many of these villages would be classified as urban. These studies point out that if India were to be a little more liberal in its definition of urban areas (minimum...

A Working Group (WG) set up by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has drafted a detailed note on land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation which seeks not only to go beyond the pending government bills on the subject, but recommends that the two be merged into a single National Development, Acquisition, Displacement and Rehabilitation Act. Interestingly, it rejects the Haryana model that Congress leaders only too often hold up...

The country is about to witness dramatic changes in food norms, impacting the industry significantly, if initiatives being taken by the Food Safety & Standards Authority (FSSAI) are a yardstick. Formulation of food recall procedures in case of unsafe or hazardous products , mandatory compliance with GAP (good Agricultural practices) for big retailers, labelling changes for packaged food items, organic food certification, setting water quality standards and verification of claims by...

-The Hindu   The government has approved the recommendations of the expert committee formed to suggest alternatives to the pesticides banned by it recently. The government asked Kerala Agricultural University to conduct study on the quality and utility of the alternatives, recommended on an interim basis, and examine whether better alternatives were available. The expert committee recommended ten pesticides in lieu of carbofuran which is used against certain pests in paddy and other...