PM pressure

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the media at the national press conference in Delhi last month that India’s inflation rate would come down to 5-6 per cent by the end of the calendar year 2010, puzzled eyebrows were raised both in the Union finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India. Neither organisation had assured the PM that this would be the case! So, where did that number come from? Even the PM’s Economic Advisory Council is not sure that inflation rate would come down so drastically from the present 10 per cent. Officials in government are all wondering whether someone fed the PM a wrong number or whether this is his way of influencing policy and getting them to do the needful!