Market's own Theory to Tackle Inflation
Economic policy in India is shaped by the Government of India through fiscal measures and by the Reserve Bank of India through monetary policy. These policies aim to promote economic growth, generate and distribute wealth equitably, maintain price stability, and ensure a dignified quality of life for citizens.
In design, these policies are comprehensive and appealing. They reflect the aspirations of policymakers, economists, social reformers, and technocrats alike, supported by data-driven systems intended to ensure transparency, efficiency, and accountability.
However, the challenge lies not in policy formulation, but in implementation.
The Missing Link: Ground Reality
Beyond formal policy frameworks exists a vast and complex informal market system. Administrative inefficiencies, procedural delays, and weak enforcement often distort the intended impact of policies. As a result, the benefits that appear robust in theory frequently become diluted in practice.
This creates a disconnect between:
Official economic policy, and
Actual market behaviour
In many cases, policies risk becoming academic exercises, with limited real-world effectiveness.
How Markets Actually Respond to Inflation
At the grassroots level, small vendors, traders, transport operators, and service providers evolve their own mechanisms to cope with rising costs and systemic pressures. These include:
1. Quantity Adjustments
Prices are held constant, but quantities are reduced—smaller portions, fewer add-ons.
This is a subtle and widely accepted form of inflation.
2. Quality Adjustments
Inputs or service quality may be marginally lowered to maintain affordability.
3. Informal Pricing Practices
Prices are determined dynamically, factoring in:
Input costs
Unofficial payments
Customer affordability
These decisions are intuitive, experience-based, and often more agile than formal models.
4. Weights and Measures Flexibility
Slight deviations in quantity are used as a buffer against cost increases. While questionable, such practices are often seen as survival strategies.
5. Embedded Corruption Costs
Informal payments at various stages—production, transport, licensing, and retail—become part of the cost structure. These are indirectly passed on to consumers.
A Parallel Economic Reality
These practices point to the existence of a parallel economic logic—one that operates independently of formal financial systems. The theories and data used by policymakers often fail to capture this layer, making inflation appear more controlled than it actually is at the consumer level.
In effect:
Formal policy aims to control inflation
Informal markets adapt to survive
The Larger Concern
While these adaptive practices demonstrate resilience and ingenuity, they also:
Reduce transparency
Distort price signals
Shift hidden costs to consumers
Undermine trust in systems
Ultimately, both producers and consumers—often from the same socio-economic strata—bear the burden.
The Way Forward
To make inflation control truly effective:
Incorporate informal sector realities into policy thinking
Reduce administrative and corruption-related frictions at the grassroots
Simplify compliance systems to encourage genuine participation
Strengthen last-mile governance to ensure policy outcomes match intent
Conclusion
There are, in effect, two parallel economies—formal and informal—each with its own methods of managing inflation. While the informal system is adaptive and resilient, it often neutralizes the intended impact of formal policy.
Bridging this gap is essential. Without aligning policy design with ground realities, even the most well-conceived economic strategies risk remaining effective only on paper.
When authorities ignore the sensitivity of public concerns, markets tend to self-correct inflationary pressures in invisible ways. This can create a dangerous illusion of invincibility for policymakers, who may wrongly attribute these adjustments to the effectiveness of their own actions.In the long run, such an illusion of invincibility can prove deeply damaging. When authorities begin to mistake market-driven adjustments for policy success, it breeds complacency, delays necessary interventions, and weakens institutional credibility. The costs of this disconnect are eventually borne by the very people whose concerns were overlooked—often in the form of sharper inflationary shocks, reduced purchasing power, and erosion of trust in governance. It is therefore imperative that policymakers remain continuously sensitive and responsive to public realities, recognising that markets may adapt silently, but they do not absolve authorities of their responsibility to act with foresight, accountability, and empathy.
Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavanthu. May there be very noble thoughts and actions from all Institutions and Individuals to ensure welfare for all in all respects.
T V G Krishnan
(personal Views).
