Who feel's the Inflation?

There are talks of Inflation everywhere in India now (or should I say everywhere in the globe). Prices of food grains have skyrocketed, and oil prices keeps rising every other day. But how much are we each Indians affected by inflation?

The impact of inflation depends on the % of your income spent on food and essential items. This is the kind of expenses you cannot avoid, and qualifies as something we call a basic necessity of life. If this is very small percentage of ones monthly income, people do not really care about it. Inflation hit’s the poorest section of the society the hardest, as most of his/her daily income goes in fulfilling their basic necessities. Even a small increase in the food price makes these basic necessity less accessible to them, and with the current trends, the poor might have been choking!!

I wonder will any one of the richer sections of the society keep track of the prices of food grains. The price of sunflower oil has crossed Rs. 100/Litre. Rice is not available below Rs. 20/-, vegetable prices increasing beyond what someone might call logical. But I guess nobody cares until it starts hitting his or her pockets hard.

To give a personal example, I really won’t care if matchboxes start costing rs.2 in place of 1, even though the price has doubled. I won’t think twice before buying it. This can be similar to vegetables/rice or other commodities for someone else. So everyone has to ask for himself, do I feel the inflation?

Inflationary effect becomes severe when there exists a huge difference in affordability within the consumers. As for food grains, everyone in the world is a consumer. Nobody would disagree that western world has very high purchasing power as compared to the African nations. So, I believe the western nations are least affected by the rising food prices (as compared to their African counterparts). This holds true for ultra rich and the poor in India too. The section of the society who can afford it all sucks up most of the essential resources, at any cost.

Inflation has culprits in the supply side too, and also an increasing affordability of a vast population of the developing nation. But nobody can deny the fact that inflation does not affect all sections of the society equally. It hits hard the section of the society who can’t afford to compete for the same “limited” resources with the ones who can afford much more...

So step back and ask to yourself, are you affected by the Inflation? Are you choking for your basic necessity?

The best we can do is use these resources in a more sensible way, & don’t waste…