-The Hindu MADURAI: Muthumari's day starts at 4 a.m. She milks her cows in the cowshed behind the house and keeps cans of milk ready to be collected by a pickup van from a private dairy company. Then she turns to her household chores and sends her children off to school. Packing the day's food for herself, she proceeds towards the fields in her village at Udayanpatti. She is not just a...

-PTI CHANDIGARH: Onion prices continued to hover around Rs 60 per kg across retail markets in Punjab and Haryana, while peas jumped to Rs 80-100 per kg. After witnessing a steep hike from Rs 30 per kg a fortnight back, onion prices have been hovering around Rs 60 per kg for the past few days, traders said today. They said it was not just the price of onion, which was in short supply...

-Live Mint The absence of genuine competition at mandis and numerous transaction charges are distorting onion prices The joke doing the rounds today is that the spike in onion prices has been a great equalizer, bringing parity between the price of a bottle of beer and a kilo of onion. The humble vegetable has also found pride of place as a gift item to customers at a tyre shop in Jamshedpur,...

-PTI Pinning hopes on rupee stabilisation and the impact of a good monsoon in the coming days, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said he expected inflation to hover around 5 and 6 per cent by the year-end. "With currency appearing to stabilise, I don't expect this (effect on inflation) to continue. I think if we can get moderation on the food front once the impact of a good monsoon...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Rising prices of onions and other vegetables pushed inflation to a five-month high of 5.79 per cent in July even as the government and RBI battled to stabilise the rupee. Inflation based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) was at 4.86 per cent in June. In July 2012, it was 7.52 per cent. The July number is above the Reserve Bank's comfort level of 4-5 per cent inflation. This is...