The remarkable insights into the changing pattern of household consumption thrown up by the latest Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023-24 are of special relevance for a wide range of policy decisions. Take, for instance, an issue that seemed to have become a bone of contention between the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI): the role and relevance of food inflation in computing consumer-price inflation and hence in formulating monetary policy. In recent months, Union ministers have expressed qualms over RBI's apparent unwillingness to look through inflation driven by food prices in its formulation of monetary policy. Commerce minister Piyush Goyal called for a rate cut, saying that in his personal view, it was a flawed approach to consider food inflation. This was followed by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaking of the need for reduced policy rates. In December, the central bank under former governor Shaktikanta Das held rates steady on the grounds of what economists call the 'second-order' (or spillover) effects of high food prices on topline inflation. And because India's inflation-targeting regime mandates RBI to keep Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation—as presently computed with 2011-12 as its base—within a band of 4-6%.This is where the results of the HCES become invaluable. In arriving at the inflation rate, or the rate of change in the general level of prices over a specified period, the weights attached to different items of consumption are derived from surveys like the HCES. The volatile 'food and beverages' component in the present CPI, for instance, has a weight of 46.8%. But this, as the HCES shows, possibly results in effective inflation being over-estimated because household expenditure on these items has since fallen to roughly 41% of the total. To the extent that India's ongoing revision in computing the CPI with 2023-24 as its base year will take the results of the latest HCES into account, we should get a more accurate measure of inflation.In India, there is an additional challenge posed by the free distribution of wheat and rice to about 800 million under the National Food Security Act. In a scenario where household spending on these foodgrains is lowered by access to free supply, the weight apportioned to 'food and beverages' could end up lower than warranted. Presently, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation redistributes the weight of these items among other items in the same category, rather than among all items in the consumption basket. Statisticians might quibble over, as wider reallocation is more likely to reflect reality. But assigning a zero weight to foodgrains poses the danger that subsequent governments will find it near impossible to withdraw free supplies even after income levels rise and there's no need for such largesse.Once retail spending on these items becomes positive rather than zero for larger numbers, a truly representative expense basket will have to assign these items some weight, potentially resulting in higher CPI inflation readings. This is something no government would like to face. The base-year updation and reworked composition of the CPI based on the HCES for 2023-24 will give us a more accurate measure of inflation and enable better monetary policy formulation by the central bank. However, it must be preceded by in-depth discussions of India's unique situation on various fronts if we are to benefit from this exercise.

Revision of the inflation gauge: Handle with care

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