Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday asked States to consider waiving mandi taxes, octroi and local taxes for taming inflation, which affected the poor “harder” and posed a serious threat to the country's growth momentum. He said much of the responsibility for checking price rise lay with the States. “Much of what needs to be done... lies in the domain of State governments... There seems to be a strong case for waiving...

Condition of six serious; they wanted government intervention to help stabilise the price of red gram In a bizarre turn of events, 12 agitating farmers in Karnataka attempted suicide in a tahsildar's office on Friday by consuming pesticide and reports said that the condition of six of them was serious. The farmers of Jewargi town, belonging to the Gulbarga District Raita Raitha Horata Samiti, had been on agitation for the past...

While monetary policy is an important element of the artillery against inflation — and with the 25 basis point hike, the RBI did part of what it was expected to do to tighten policy — there is the fiscal task too. As Raghuram Rajan, adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, points out, the Centre must control expenditure, cut subsidies and not start new spending programmes. Fiscal deficits are large and rising...

India's food prices are likely to ease, bringing down food inflation from stubbornly high levels, over the next two months as supplies of onions and other vegetables are expected to pick up, industry officials said Thursday. The country's food inflation rate surged to more than 18% in December as vegetable prices, particularly those of onions, spiked after unseasonal rain damaged crops. India's food inflation rate has slightly eased since then, but...

World food prices hit a new record high in January after rising for a seventh consecutive month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said Thursday, warning the poor would be hit hardest. The FAO Food Price Index, which monitors monthly price changes for a basket of commodities, averaged 231 points in January -- up 3.4 percent from December and its highest level since FAO started measuring food prices in...