Inflation cost Indians Rs 58,00,00,00,00,000 extra!

Indian households incurred an additional expenditure of whopping Rs 5.8 lakh crore (Rs 5.8 trillion) in the last three years, due to spiralling inflation and dearer food items, says a research report.

"The rise in inflation to 8 per cent per year during 2008-09 to 2010-11, from 5 per cent in the preceding three years eroded the purchasing power of money and inflated the consumption expenditure bill of Indian households by Rs 5.8 lakh crore," research firm Crisil said in a study, Inflation Hurts.

It said that inflation was not uniform and food items saw a much sharper price increase as compared to non-food items during the three-year period.

"Food inflation was at 11.6 per cent during 2008-09 to 2010-11 as compared to non-food inflation of 5.7 per cent," Crisil said.

Headline inflation, which includes both food and non-food primary articles besides manufactured items, has been above the 8 per cent mark since January 2010. It stood at 9.06 per cent in May this year.

The Reserve Bank of India has hiked its key policy rates 10 times since March 2010 to curb demand and tame inflation.

In its annual monetary policy for 2011-12, the RBI said that inflationary pressure is likely to continue during the first half of the current fiscal on account of high global commodity prices, particularly crude.

The apex bank had exuded confidence that the pressure from high food prices would moderate in the days to come.

However, after a brief period of moderation, food inflation has again started surging and stood at 9.13 per cent for the week ended June 11.

This happens even as manufactured inflation, which has over 65 per cent share in the Wholesale Price Index basket, has breached the 7 per cent mark.

"The surge in inflation was initially driven by supply shocks such as a rise in food and fuel prices, which then spread to manufacturing goods as well," Crisil said.

Headline inflation for the whole of 2010-11 averaged 9.6 per cent as compared to a mere 3.8 per cent during the previous fiscal.

Experts have said that with the recent hike in prices of diesel, kerosene and cooking gas, overall inflation is likely to touch double-digit in July.

The study said that growth of private consumption expenditure in nominal terms increased to nearly 17 per cent per year during 2008-09 to 2010-11, as against 14 per cent in the preceding 3 years mainly due to rise in food inflation.

Crisil said the price trends of commodities in the WPI favour the middle and higher income classes, rather than poor and vulnerable Indian households who spend large part of their income on food.

"The middle and high income groups benefit more from falling prices of non-food manufactured items particularly durable goods, as they have higher disposable income to spend on other goods and services, including consumer durables and for savings," Crisil chief economist D K Joshi said.

"The poor, with limited discretionary income to spend on consumer durables, do not benefit much from their lower prices. In contrast, rising prices of food items strain their discretionary spending," he added.

Crisil said that food inflation is likely to remain high in the near future due to structural and supply side issues.

"Higher food prices should be an incentive to enhance production of food items, but this has not happened so far. In addition to price signals, productivity improvement in food/agriculture categories would require better technology and improved investments in irrigation. In the absence of these measures, high food inflation is here to stay," it said.

The study said that inflation in certain food items, especially egg, meat, fish and milk, has surged to double- digit over the last two years after having moderately in the preceding period.

"Rise in prices of these items has a greater impact on consumers, as they are purchased frequently and also account for a large share of a household's daily expenditure.

Purchases of manufactured goods, especially durables, are not as frequent. Therefore, a decline in prices of these goods often goes unnoticed," it said.

In 2010-11, prices of 146 out of 676 items in the WPI basket fell.

Of these, 117 items belonged to manufactured categories, including consumer goods as well as intermediate goods used as inputs for production of other goods.

However, the decline in these items was neutralised by additional spending on food products, Crisil said.

Tribal girl’s journey to a ‘new world’

This girl, who could not manage two square meals a day, is now representing India on world forums.

It has been a long journey for Durga Mallu Gudilu — from selling clips and needles on Mumbai’s local trains, to representing the country at the World Social Forum in Brazil.

And the lanky 22- year- old has had to overcome the stiffest of odds in her quest for this remarkable turnaround.

An 8x10- foot cubbyhole of a room in the Sanjay Nagar slums, located in Jogeshwari ( East), serves as a home for Durga, her parents and sister Govindi. They belong to the “nomadic” Vaidu community that has been living in the area for the past 30 years.

The community, now an identified tribe, still holds panchayats headed by elderly males to decide on law and order. “Vaidus are relegated to one of the most neglected parts of the expansive slum.

The nearest toilet is 200 meters away; girls stand in serpentine queues at 5 am daily to fill up unhygienic and contaminated water from the nearest tap and most members of the community suffer from tuberculosis,” primary health centre nurse Neelima said.

That’s not all. The men eke out their living by recycling and repairing old steel dabbas . “ More than half of the meager Rs 30 that they earn are spent on drinking. And wife beating inevitably follows the boozing,” Durga’s 63- year- old mother Anku Bai says.

The family used to struggle to get, even two square meals a day. “As a child, I had never seen home- cooked food since we used to beg for food in trains and homes,” Durga recalls.

But things underwent a dramatic change ever since Durga became one of the first girls to be educated in the community. Today, she has completed Class XII, imparts basic computer training and runs a coaching centre for 40- odd schoolchildren from her cramped kholi. She also uses the computer to stay in touch with her friends from Peru and USA whom she met during the forum.

Durga remembers how the NGO Yuva had managed to convince her parents to send her to the local municipal school. “Initially, my sister and I were made to sit separately as we used to be stink,” she says, adding that it was the progress they made in studies and sports that helped them gain acceptance among classmates.

Being lettered had other spin- offs as well. “Since the girls started going to school, we gained respectability and stopped begging. Their father stopped drinking, too,” Anku Bai says.

“The journey from those days to the smart and confident woman that Durga has become, is no mean achievement,” Raju Bhise of Yuva points out. “We gave her the support and guidance; but it was she who has stood out with her leadership skills,” he adds.

Govindi, the older of the two girls, is pursuing a software course from GNIIT. Durga will pursue her graduation only after Govindi finishes her course because one of them has to look after the household.

Forthright and outspoken, Durga has her own viewpoint.

“The Rs 16 crore announced by the Maharashtra government to create awareness about child labour will not achieve much until parents are helped to get sustainable livelihoods,” she observes. Having performed street plays and participated in poster campaigns as well as in door- to- door mobilization drives to raise awareness about child labour and other issues, she definitely knows what she is talking about.

The Decline And Fall Of Handwriting

Languishing in remote corners of publishers' warehouses must be piles of mildewed books that claim to understand human beings through their handwriting. Yellowing pages devoted to the way you dot your 'i's and cross your 't's, with each characteristic loop, slant and curlicue identifying you as introverted, sociable, pathological or a unique combination of the three. ("Lines sloping downward? Looks you need some Prozac at once!") Graphology, it's called, from graphos, writing, and logos, word. If I'm not mistaken, there was even one such volume that claimed to make you change your life simply by changing your handwriting.

Whether such analysis is science or mumbo-jumbo, handwriting itself is in irreversible decline. Most prefer nowadays to strike or touch keyboards, with the result that the knowledge of an art we spent years painstakingly perfecting now lies gathering dust in our synapses. Heidi Harralson, a Tucson graphologist, was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying, "I'm seeing an increase in inconstancy in the handwriting and poor form level — sloppy, semi-legible script that's inconsistent." I feel your pain, Heidi: I used to be proud of my cursive style, now lying in tatters. Once, doctors were famously derided for illegible handwriting; now all of our scribbled notes look like medical prescriptions.

The exception to this disuse has to be the legions of hapless school and college students who, out of necessity, take notes in classes and write examination papers. I can still feel, on the first joint of the middle finger of my right hand, the vestiges of the callus that appeared every time examinations neared. (I also shudderingly recall filling up answer sheets with a fountain pen in an examination hall during a power cut, with sweat dripping off my forehead onto the paper and blotting my deathless prose.)

Students apart, there are some, including authors, who still claim to prefer writing by hand — at least for their first drafts — as they feel it creates a direct connection between the brain and the hand that composes. Neil Gaiman, for instance, has said that one reason he likes writing by hand is that "it slows me down a little, but it also forces me to keep going: I'm never going to spend half a day noodling with a sentence to try and get it just right, if I'm using a pen. I'll do all that when I start typing." Fair point. Salman Rushdie, on the other hand, claims to use both modes of writing, but "when sentences were in my handwriting, I found it difficult to be objective about their quality. I either thought they were too good, or I thought they were too bad. I was either too critical of them or not critical enough. I couldn't have proper distance."

Fountain pen manufacturers may extol the virtues of their workmanship, pedigree and ability to convey sophistication — much like purveyors of wristwatches — but for those of us who aren't authors, occasions to write by hand are fewer and farther between. Letters have given way to e-mail and even greeting cards and postcards, which by their very nature needed hand-written messages, are being edged out by their e-versions. Avid diarists too, one presumes, are lured into recording their thoughts on computer screens rather than in lavender-scented, cloth-bound volumes. The pen isn't mightier than the keyboard.

Lamentations, though, are of little use. It's not in the nature of tides, as King Canute discovered, to go into reverse gear. One imagines medieval monks shaking their heads in sorrow at the invention of the printing press, claiming that this would put paid to books as they knew them, followed by rows of copyists hanging up their quills. Similar sentiments must have stirred in the hearts of those who used clay tablets and bone styluses when they came across people employing new-fangled objects such as reeds and papyri.

The art of longhand may continue to be practiced in shopping lists, short scribbles in notebooks and hasty business memos, but the writing's clearly on the wall. Amid all the elegies for the printed book that are appearing thick and fast nowadays, spare a thought for the humble handwritten line, doomed to survive only in the vaults of memory.