Eating out and salon treatments: It's a policy dilemma for RBI

The surge in expenditure is pushing core inflation higher and could keep overall consumer price inflation well above the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) 4.7 per cent target by March 2019

From living off money collected by her four-year old daughter to spending at least 50 per cent more on eating out and shopping, housewife Ruth Timmy Verghese says she’s had a sharp lifestyle turnaround in the last few months. The 32-year-old said she had to break into her daughter’s piggy bank to meet household expenses when India suddenly pulled most high-denomination currency notes out of circulation in November two years ago.
 
“We’re more confident to spend now on shopping and eating out than we were a year or two back because now our income flow has stabilised,” said Verghese,