New Delhi: At a time when India is reeling from 7.4 percent retail inflation driven by high vegetable prices, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech laid the blame for the price rise on “imported inflation”. Speaking at the Red Fort Tuesday, Modi said the government would take more steps to ease the burden of inflation on Indians.
The world is yet to fully recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic, Modi said, adding that the Russia-Ukraine war has “created yet another problem” and that the world is “grappling with the problem of inflation”.
Inflation, he said, has “gripped the global economy”.
“India imports what it needs from the world…it is our misfortune that, in doing so, we also have to import inflation.”
The Prime Minister’s statements come a day after the government released the July 2023 data of the Consumer Price Index, which showed that retail inflation had surged to a 15-month high of 7.44 percent last month, significantly higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s 6 percent upper comfort limit. Rural inflation was at 7.6 percent, data showed.
Notably, while the Prime Minister spoke about “imported inflation”, the data showed that the price rise in India was mainly driven by a 10.6 percent inflation in the food articles category. Within this, inflation in vegetable prices was at a scorching 37.3 percent.
Data from the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that vegetable inflation is being driven by the rise in prices of potatoes, onions, and especially tomatoes — which have over the last 3.5 months seen a 17 percent, 24 percent, and 360 percent increase, respectively.
The food articles category has a weightage of about 46 percent in the overall CPI, and so changes in the price of food items has a large impact on the overall index.
In contrast, the fuel and light category — which is heavily impacted by imported inflation due to India’s oil import dependence — saw only 3.7 percent inflation in July.
“India has taken every step to keep inflation under control and we have even seen some success in this,” Modi said. “But we are not satisfied with just that. We need to take more steps to ensure that Indians feel the least pressure of inflation, and will take those steps. My efforts will never stop.”
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Fastest 5G rollout, next step 6G
In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister also said that when the India of the last few years decides something, its track record has shown that it does not rest without achieving it.
“We rolled out 5G at the fastest pace in the world and it has reached 700 districts in the country,” Modi said. “And now, we are preparing for 6G as well. We have made a task force.”
The Prime Minister launched 5G services on 1 October, 2022, and within eight months, he inaugurated the 2,00,000th site on 24 May, 2023, with 700 districts having been covered across all 28 states and eight union territories, the government announced in May.
In March this year, Modi also unveiled the government’s 6G Vision Document to roll out 6G services in India by 2030. “Internet data used to be very expensive before 2014, but is now the cheapest in the world,” Modi said during his speech at the Red Fort. “Every family is saving money.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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