How onions and pulses could wreck the Centre's food inflation arithmetic

Damage to standing crops due to extended rain, depletion of stocks at home and in global markets could spoil the calculations

While both the Centre and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) remain optimistic about a fall in retail inflation during the coming weeks due to the bumper Kharif harvest and the steps taken to ease the price situation, two items namely, onions and pulses, could prove to be spoke in the wheel in the government's inflation calculations.

However, to what extent the price rise benefits the farmers is a million-dollar question. This is because studies show that if there is a perfect transmission to them from consumers, a 10 per cent increase in the price realised by farmers directly raises