Such is the sad state of economic mismanagement that when, after staying above 20 per cent for almost 30 consecutive weeks from November 2009, inflation fell below 10 per cent in four of the last five weeks this was viewed in some quarters as ‘moderate'.
This being the case, it is possible that the much higher 15.9 per cent increase in food prices for the financial year 2010-11 as a whole (year-on-year rather than week-on-week) will be dismissed as a ‘thing of the past'.
And so it is, in the sense that it may be sometime before we once again see over 20 per cent rates. On the other hand, there are no signs that the past is ‘over and done with'; higher prices are probably here to stay.
The rate of increase may slow down; but a fall is unlikely.
This seems a little odd, given that food prices have tended to rise in spikes in the recent past, with ‘different commodities spiking at different times.' The obvious question is ‘why is there no reversion to norm'?
But for cereals at least (and these have a 25 per cent weight in the wholesale price index for food) we have Dr Kaushik Basu's reassurance that there is nothing odd about prices rising forever (though it is true that cereals rose a relatively modest 18.5 per cent over the past two years, compared with 33 per cent for food articles as a whole).
The reason is simply that instead of buying when the harvest is good, and dumping stocks when prices are high, the government adds to stocks both when times are good, and when times are bad.
As one of Dr Basu's colleagues told him, ‘the government is the biggest hoarder'.
But that is another story.