PIB TrackerInflation at 4.45% — and silver up 110%
July's CPI on the new 2024=100 base put headline inflation at 4.45 per cent and food at 5.52, with tomato swinging from +32 to −4.6 per cent in a month while silver jewellery ran at 109.84.
What happened
- Headline CPI inflation was 4.45 per cent in July 2026 on the new 2024=100 base.
- Rural inflation was 4.84 per cent and urban 3.96 per cent.
- Food inflation (CFPI) was 5.52 per cent; housing 2.22 per cent.
- Silver jewellery inflated 109.84 per cent; ginger 83.62, onion 22.54.
- Tomato swung from +31.92 per cent in June to −4.59 per cent in July.
For Prelims
- CPI base revision: the series now runs on base 2024=100, replacing the earlier 2012=100 base.
- CFPI: the Consumer Food Price Index — the food sub-index of CPI, at 5.52 per cent in July.
- Why rural exceeds urban: food carries a larger weight in the rural consumption basket.
- Inflation targeting: the RBI's flexible inflation targeting framework sets 4 per cent ± 2 per cent on headline CPI.
- Who compiles it: the National Statistical Office under MoSPI; the Field Operations Division collects prices weekly.
- Coverage: 1,407 urban markets (including online) and 1,465 villages; response rate 100 per cent.
- Note: WPI is a separate index of wholesale prices; the RBI targets CPI, not WPI.
For UPSC: The month's core data card. Use it for flexible inflation targeting and the tolerance band, food versus core inflation, the rural-urban inflation divergence, and why base-year revision matters for any comparison over time.
What it is NOT: Because the base year has changed to 2024=100, these numbers are not directly comparable with the older 2012=100 series — and a single month's item-level swing, like tomato, is seasonal noise rather than a trend.
For Mains
Syllabus: GS3.1 · GS3.5 · Linkage L1
Anchor
Headline inflation inside the band tells you the aggregate is calm; the item table tells you no household actually experiences the aggregate.
Substantiation (data)
4.45 per cent headline with food at 5.52, rural 4.84 against urban 3.96, and silver jewellery at 109.84 per cent.
Exemplification
Tomato moved from +31.92 per cent in June to −4.59 in July — a 36-point swing in one item in one month.
Problematisation
Precious-metal inflation above 100 per cent barely moves a basket where it carries a small weight, while food at 5.52 per cent hits rural households hardest — the same index, two different experiences.
Way-forward
Read headline against core, watch the rural-urban gap as the distributional signal, and treat the base revision as a break in the series.
Position
An inflation number is a national average of a deeply unequal experience of prices.
Deploys into: Economy + food security (GS3.1, GS3.5) · flexible inflation targeting and the tolerance band, food versus core inflation, and the rural-urban inflation divergence.
Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation · 2026-08-12 · PRID 2298247 · PIB source ↗