Perhaps, more hope than confidence.

 "The government on Thursday unveiled a new series for the consumer price index for industrial workers (CPI-IW), a measure of inflation used to calculate dearness allowance for government employees, wages for industrial workers and dearness relief for pensioners." "The new index assigns more weight to spending on services such as education, healthcare, housing, travel and transportation", while the weight assigned to food has been brought down from 46.2% to 39%. This is expected to lead to a rise in salaries and dearness allowance (DA) of government employees. At present government employees get DA at the rate of 17% of their basic salary to shield them against rising prices but their is no relief for private citizens as the Reserve Bank (RBI) kept interest rate at 4%, hammering their earnings from savings. "Consumer inflation in the country increased to 7.34 percent in September from 6.69% percent in the previous month" which was blamed on food inflation of 10.68%. "Millions of households are staring at negative returns from their savings", leading to an alarming situation for households that are already facing growing financial insecurity as a result of widespread disruptions caused by the pandemic", wrote Shayan Ghosh. "On Wednesday, the Union Cabinet cleared a Rs 3737-crore (Rs 37.37 billion) bonus for 30.6 lakh (3.06 million) central government employees." No wonder, "The consumer confidence index declined to 49.9 in September, as against 53.8 in July. However, the index has improved from 105.4 to 115.9 on a one-year ahead expectations basis, indicating a recovery in the consumer confidence level over the next twelve months." The present figure is a response to the dire state of the economy but the future should perhaps be called 'consumer hope' instead of 'consumer confidence', because no one is sure what is going to happen, but hope that the epidemic will be controlled, a vaccine will be protective and jobs and earnings will come back. "It is unlikely output will get back to pre-covid levels before the end of the next financial year. That is two lost years, and a permanent output loss of around Rs 350-400 crore (Rs 3.5-4 billion)," wrote Niranjan Rajdhyaksha. However, government stimulus has been more like that of western countries than emerging economies. Maybe, because this government cannot do any more than it is doing already. "The Modi government has been practicing socialism more than preceding Congress-led governments" and "has been hand-holding the economy, nudging, encouraging private sector players to do this, to do that, holding melas not just for investors but also for entrepreneurs, innovators", wrote P Venkateshwar Rao Jr. The result is that the private sector has been reluctant to invest. Government employees should be paid but taxpayers should not be punished with financial repression. It is better to be a government peon than an officer in a private company. Consumers may hope. They are likely to be disappointed.