In the last two quarters (January-March FY20 and April-June FY21), the average consumer price index-based inflation breached 6 percent. For August, India's retail inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), stood at 6.69 percent.
However, contrary to retail inflation, India's wholesale price index (WPI) hasn’t risen at a similar pace. As supply chains remained disrupted during the months of lockdown, the gap between wholesale and retail inflation widened substantially during those months.
Though the gap between the two eased after the lifting of the lockdown began in a phased manner around June, in some categories like vegetables and pulses, the gap continued to remain wide. This shows that for some items, farmers are not even getting a fraction of what consumers are paying.
WPI inflation in vegetables for June contracted 9.21 percent while in the same month CPI inflation in vegetables stood at 1.86 percent. In July, WPI inflation in vegetables stood at 8.2 percent while CPI inflation for the same month in vegetables was seen at 11.29 percent. In August, WPI inflation in vegetables was at 7.03 percent while CPI inflation for the same month in vegetables was at 11.41 percent.