Editorial 1 : Food flux
Context
Amid the cooler headline inflation, food price pressures pose a risk.
The rise in prices
- In October, India’s consumer price inflation eased to a four-month low of 4.87%, while wholesale prices declined year-on-year for the seventh successive month by a minor 0.5%.
- Although only marginally lower than the 5% retail inflation in September, October’s price rise pace — which is exactly the same as that in June — surely represents some relief for the third successive month from July’s 15-month high pace of over 7.4%.
- Rural consumers still face a higher inflation of 5.1%, though.
- Core inflation, which excludes energy and food costs, has eased further and household services inflation dropped below 4% after several months above.
- The rise in prices of vegetables, which had surged over 37% in July, eased to 2.7% in October.
- However, the overall uptick in food costs for households stayed firm at 6.6%, virtually unchanged from September, as other essential edibles saw faster price hikes or remained at elevated levels.
- Some of these — like pulses (up 18.8%) and cereals (10.7%) — may be attributed to worries about the kharif output and uncertain rabi prospects as well as hikes in minimum support prices for crops.
- Pulses prices were up 19.4% at the wholesale level, signalling that more pass-through to retail prices is likely.
The committee
- The Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India, which meets early December for its next review, will not be too swayed by the October tidings.
- As per its 5.6% average inflation projection for this quarter, down from 6.4% in the previous quarter, November and December may well see an average inflation of 5.95%, fractionally short of the central bank’s upper tolerance threshold.
- Excluding edible oils, whose 13.7% year-on-year drop in prices played a key role in moderating the Consumer Price Index, would have meant a 5.6% rise in prices.
- Base effects from last year, when the Ukraine conflict had spiked edible oil prices, will start to dissipate in coming months.
- Similarly, while the 6.8% inflation recorded in October 2022 helped cool price rise last month, those base effects will surely ebb this month.
- Retail inflation had eased to 5.88% last November, with the food price index rising just 4.7%, from 7% in the previous month.
- Households that seem to have adjusted to the continuous recent rise in living costs, by pulling back on discretionary spends and downsizing essential consumption as per industrial output trends, are likely to remain cautious rather than loosen their purse strings anytime soon.
Conclusion
For an economy whose resilience relies on its domestic demand buffer against global shocks, reluctant or budget-cramped consumers are the biggest headwind for policymakers to strive to address.
Editorial 2 : Life over death
Context
Abolition of death penalty should form the core of any reform in justice system.
Abolition of death penalty
- It is disappointing that the parliamentary committee that examined the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the proposed criminal statute likely to replace the IPC, has not made a recommendation to abolish the death penalty.
- Instead, the standing committee on Home Affairs, despite submissions from experts and jurists on abolition, chose to make a bland recommendation that the matter may be left for the government to consider.
- Its observation is limited to a remark that it has understood that the reason for a passionate argument against the death penalty is that the judicial system can be fallible and to prevent an innocent person from being wrongly sentenced to death.
- However, domain experts had made some persuasive submissions before the panel: that instances of trial courts awarding death were on the rise, whereas statistical trends showed that the Supreme Court of India was leaning away from capital punishment.
- And that social scientists had demonstrated it had no deterrent effect and that global opinion was in favour of its abolition.
- The Court awarded the death penalty to only seven people from 2007 to 2022, while all death sentences were either set aside or commuted to life in 2023, as they did not fall under the “rarest of rare cases”.
Capital punishment over life
- Members who added notes of dissent to the report also highlighted the argument that capital punishment has been shown to be no deterrent; that imprisonment for the remainder of the convict’s natural life will be a more rigorous punishment and provide scope for reform; and that most of those on death row came from underprivileged backgrounds.
- They have also made the point that the three Bills proposing a new body of criminal law are substantially the same as the existing IPC, Code of Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act.
- If at all, Parliament moves to enact the draft Bills, with changes suggested by the parliamentary panel, it will be in the fitness of things if it is used as an occasion to reconsider the need to retain the death penalty.
- The BNS has defined ‘life imprisonment’ as a term for the remainder of one’s natural life, and this should be the default alternative to death sentences.
- The case for abolition will gain strength if the trend of seeking premature release of life convicts on political grounds is arrested and life terms without remission become more common.
Way forward
- Remission should be a humanitarian act and never a source of political controversy.
- Removing capital punishment from the statute book and introducing a rational and universal remission policy will be a substantive reform in the justice system.