Soaring Inflation - A Curse for Poor People

--By P. Neelakantha Achary, Staff Writer

The nation is feeling the heat of 41-month high inflation, which was at 7.41 per cent in the week ending March 29 and eased a bit to remain at 7.14% in the week ending April 05. The inflation may prove stoppage for the economic development. There are expectations of achieving dual digit growth rate, but the inflation might have kept it low. Poorer section are the worst-affected due to the inflation - the rise of price of commodities including essential commodities.

The public distribution system (PDS) is not very effective, further measures should be taken to strengthen this. The better PDS would be very effective to check inflation, by providing commodities to the people at concession rate. Apart from that, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may take monetary measures to check the supply side of the inflation, by changing the structure of interest rates and Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR).

But the biggest challenge is to put immediate check on inflation. All the measures will take certain time to be effective. As some monetary agencies cleared that the pressure of inflation would persists for next few months. The government would try to supply commodities through PDS for the people at concession rate, but in short run how much the government can supply that is a big question.

Similarly, the RBI measures will take some time to be effective, till then the people can simple watch the measures and bear the burden of inflation. By the time the measures bail out the people from the inflationary pressure, they would have been hurt completely.