Govt plan to counter inflation flak

The Govt has come up with a data that shows prices of 30 essential commodities has risen only by 5.74 pc, less than half of the inflation rate, reports C Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 30, 2008, 24:23:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Facing adverse publicity over rising prices, the government has come up with a data that shows prices of 30 essential commodities has risen only by 5.74 per cent, less than half of the inflation rate.

Armed with figures, the cabinet secretariat has asked all ministries to run awareness campaign to project the “real” inflation picture.

The Cabinet Secretariat has generated the data by using the Consumer Price Index, which shows the prices of items like wheat, rice, edible oil and vanaspati, vegetables and spices, dairy and animal products and tea, sugar and salt has risen only by 5.74 per cent.

“Inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for industrial workers, which is the most widely used measure for wage indexation, for the month of May 2008 was lower at 7.8 per cent. During this period, CPI for agriculture and rural labourers increased by 9.1 per cent and 8.8 per cent,” claimed the note circulated by Cabinet Secretariat.

Besides, increase in prices of 30 essential commodities was also 5.74 per cent as on July 5, 2008, which is less than half the rate of inflation measures in terms of Wholesale Price Index (WPI), the note added.

In the note, the government has tried to maintain that WPI, on which inflation is not measured, does not reflect the increase in prices of consumer items. It said the prices for vegetables such as onion and brinjal and fruits as pineapples and papaya had declined in July.

Even though the government admits of higher inflation rate in the last four years, it claims credit for not allowing the impact of international price rise to Indian consumers.

The Cabinet Secretariat also said that the internationally rice prices has increased by 169.9 per cent whereas in domestic market the increase has been only of 8.4 per cent. Similarly, wheat prices have increased by 68.5 per cent internationally whereas in India it has increased by 8.4 per cent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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