The Hindu Business Line : Inflation remedy

Try ‘inflation’ in the Google News search window, and you get 122,439 finds in ‘0.74 seconds’. These range from reports on measures taken by central bankers to tame price rise, to stories about how inflation has taken its toll on consumer spending.

For instance, the Reserve Bank of India has cautioned that inflation is way beyond the tolerable limit and, therefore, stringent policy measures to keep price rise under check may be forthcoming ( www.ptinews.com ).

“Japan’s core inflation rose at its fastest pace in nearly 11 years in July due to rising gasoline and food prices,” reports www.forbes.com . And, in the UAE, the recent recovery of the US dollar following a steep decline over the past year could finally put brakes on accelerating inflation rates in the absence of other effective policy tools, anticipates www.business24-7.ae .

Inflation is not a new problem. A news report, for example, in The Hindu, dated October 6, 1908, speaks of how “in view of the present rise in the prices of rice and other articles of food, the Cochin Government have sanctioned as a special case, for the three months of Chingom, Kanni and Thulam 1084, the grant of compensation allowance to all low-paid servants of the State.”

Rates of compensation allowance were as follows, as evident from the clipping in The Hindu Archives: “Officers on Rs 10 to Rs 6, Re 1-8 per mensem; officers drawing Rs 5 and less: such allowance as will bring up their pay to Rs 6 per mensem.”

The Government had estimated that Rs 20,000 would be needed for this inflation management measure. With Chingom on already, when Kerala celebrates Onam during the month, it can be a matter of worry that price increases have the potential to act as a dampener of the festivities.

If you are interested in knowing what the prices were like in ‘those days,’ there is some help in a page that draws data from the Buldhana District Gazetteer published in 1910. Available online ( www.maharashtra.gov.in ), it informs that rice, chiefly imported from the Central Provinces, was sold at the rate of 19 seers per rupee in 1853-54, and varied from 12 to 6 seers during the subsequent years of the 19th century. “In 1906 and 1907 the rates were 9 and 8 seers, respectively.”

In India, the seer was defined by the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1956, as being exactly equal to 0.93310 kg, however there were many local variants of the seer in India, informs http://en.wikipedia.org. In Madras, for instance, it was 9.33 kg (or about 25 pounds) and in Bombay, 28 pounds.

D. MURALI

K. RAJENDRABABU