India: food fight

Rising food prices will test political allegiances in India this week.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)(CPI-M) has given the government a Tuesday deadline to meet its demands on tackling inflation. These include restrictions on futures trading and an expansion of government food distribution. Communists provide the national Congress-led administration with parliamentary support, but economic and foreign policy issues have long strained relations.

Shortcomings in food production -- including with irrigation, transportation and distribution systems -- have caused supply problems that have helped inflation to soar. Global factors are also at play, including the push towards biofuels and demand for luxury food crops that have diverted local farmers from producing basic foodstuffs.

It is the poor that feel the impact of food price rises most sharply. These costs are politically sensitive. Several steps have already been taken to tame inflation -- including export bans and duty cuts. Congress has also sought to ease the burden on millions of rural poor by guaranteeing employment and wiping off debts. But these measures have been to little avail so far. It now faces the prospect of a pincer movement as forces on the right and left of the political spectrum at national and regional levels up the pressure for action on the upward prices.