Move over Dosanomics, make way for the new ‘Thalinomics’
PRICE OF A VEGETARIAN THALI INCREASED LAST YEAR AFTER FALLING ‘SIGNIFICANTLY’ FOR FIVE YEARS
NEW DELHI: After the hamburger and dosa, economists have now turned to the thali to try and illustrate the impact of inflation on a nation’s life. Make that the nation’s dinner table.
It’s not quite a north-south divide in economic policymaking, but taking a cue from his predecessor and teacher Raghuram Rajan’s “Dosanomics”, chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian on Friday unveiled what he called “Thalinomics” in the Economic Survey for 2019-20.
Rajan’s view was simple: keeping inflation down matters more than low interest rates in deciding how many dosas end up on your dining table every year.
Arguably, Subramanian takes a slightly broader peek at the nation’s kitchen.
“What better way to make economics relate to the common person than something that (s)he encounters every day—a plate of food? Enter ‘Thalinomics: The economics of a plate of food in India’—an attempt to quantify what a common person pays for a Thali across India,” says the Economic Survey 2019-20.
Indeed, Thalinomics may just evolve into India’s very own Big Mac Index, which informally measures the purchasing power parity of currencies of different countries through a price comparison of McDonald’s hamburger in the stated geographies.
“Has a Thali become more or less affordable? Has inflation in the price of a Thali increased or decreased? Is the inflation the same for a vegetarian Thali as for a non-vegetarian one? Is the inflation in the price of a Thali different across different states and regions in India? Which components account for the changes in the price of a Thali—the cereals, vegetables, pulses or the cost of fuel required for its preparation?” asked the Economic Survey presented in Parliament on Friday.
The short answer is that the price of a vegetarian thali—usually made up of staples, daal (pulses), a vegetable curry and dahi (curd)—increased last year after falling “significantly” for five years. Non-vegetarian savings were far less.
“Price data from the Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers for around 80 centres in 25 States/UTs from April 2006 to October 2019 is used. Both across India and the four regions— North, South, East and West—it is found that the absolute prices of a vegetarian Thali have decreased significantly since 2015-16 though the price has increased in 2019,” it said.
“As a result, an average household of five individuals that eats two vegetarian Thalis a day gained around ₹10,887 on average per year while a non-vegetarian household gained ₹11,787, on average, per year. Using the annual earnings of an average industrial worker, it is found that affordability of vegetarian Thalis improved 29% from 2006-07 to 2019-20 while that for non-vegetarian Thalis improved by 18%.”