Lots of sound and fury.

 The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to keep repo rate, reverse repo rate, bank rate and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate unchanged at its latest meeting this week, ET. "With a 5:1 majority, the MPC also opted to maintain an accommodative stance in order to support economic growth and recovery. This is the tenth consecutive time that the rate has remained unchanged. The central bank last revised the policy rate on May 22, 2020." "Accommodative stance" means that, not only is the RBI ruling out any tightening of policy, it is ready to cut rates further if it so fancies. Possibly because it expects economic growth at 7.8% in 2022-23, lower than the 8-8.5% growth predicted by the Economic Survey, CNBC. "RBI has projected retail inflation at 5.3 percent for the current fiscal (ending 31 March 2022) and 4.5 percent for FY23." The RBI is faced with a trade-off between growth and inflation, wrote Samiran Chakraborty. "Should RBI offer a helping hand to the government by providing explicit buying support to the large borrowing program," even with "potential loss of credibility"? Chakraborty expected the RBI to increase the reverse repo rate, at which it borrows from commercial banks, ET, by a tiny 15-20 basis points, just to show that it is incharge, while keeping borrowing costs low to finance the fiscal deficit. "The government has pegged the fiscal deficit for 2021-22 at 6.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and at 6.4 percent of GDP for 2022-23, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said," CNBC. This has disappointed Fitch Ratings. "India's public debt/GDP ratio, at about 87% in FY21, is well above the median of around 60% for 'BBB' rated sovereigns," Fitch. "The government has little fiscal headroom at its current rating level to respond to possible shocks to growth." Credit ratings for India are just above the speculative grade for all agencies, (world government bonds), so we cannot risk any downgrade. "Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India expects the nation's biggest fuel retailers to sharply raise pump prices after Assembly elections next month," DH, which will immediately raise prices and impact consumer spending. "Retail prices of biscuits, beauty products and home appliances are among a host of consumer goods to face another round of price increase this quarter as companies battle high commodity costs and margin pressures," Mint. When the Budget announced higher than anticipated fiscal deficit, "yields on government securities shot up and their prices crashed", ET. "Debt mutual funds holding these bonds suffered enormous erosion in value." Ordinary investors suffered massive losses. To increase demand for government bonds and raise their prices the RBI increased the investment limit for foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) by Rs 1 trillion, TOI. In current times "monetary and fiscal policies cannot be a question of either or, but must go in tandem with each other", said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das. Which means that the RBI is taking orders from the Finance Ministry. And all these discussions and debates are meaningless. Just lots of sound and fury.