A declining trend has started in the prices of food commodities over the past few weeks. Over the last three months prices of atta, gram dal, tur dal, urad dal, moong dal, masoor dal,  potato and onion have shown a declining trend while rice, wheat and salt have remained constant. Apart from these, over the last one month prices of wheat, sugar, mustard oil and tea have also started showing a declining trend.

The central government lost an important opportunity to work out a consensus of how to ensure food security for our people at the recent meeting of chief ministers on the price rise issue. The agenda note circulated at the meeting makes it clear that the UPA government has no intention of a course correction in the policies which have resulted in continuing high rates of inflation of food items which reached almost 18 per cent (WPI) in the week ending January 31. The government has consistently refused to accept its own responsibilities and has sought to explain away high prices through lame excuses, one of them being that high inflation rates are a global phenomenon.

Five Payloads from foreign countries were carried in Chandrayaan-I free of cost. They are Near Infra Red Spectrometer & Sub Kev Atom Reflecting Analyser from Sweden, Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment from Bulgaria and Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar and Moon Mineralogy Mapper from USA.

The Ministry of Indian Overseas Affairs has signed Memorandum of Understanding with some of the countries in the Gulf for protection as well as welfare of Overseas Indian workers. There is no proposal to sign such an agreement with Australia for protection of Indian workers/students.

The report on “Problems relating to NRI Marriages” was published by NCW after conducting joint regional workshops with Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs. It contains various recommendations which include Legal Interventions – International i.e feasibility of signing the Hague Conventions and Legal Interventions – Domestic i.e compulsory Registration of Marriages. To find out the ways and means to assist Indian women who are deserted by their overseas Indian spouses, an Inter-Ministerial sub – committee was constituted in the Ministry to study the “Problems related to marriage of Indian women with Overseas Indians”.