Bowing to foreigners.

"India's retail inflation accelerated to 4.38% in June as elevated food and fuel prices, geopolitical tensions in West Asia and concern over an uneven monsoon kept price pressure firm. The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading breached the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) medium term inflation target of 4% after 17 months." "Retail food inflation stood at 5.32% in June compared with 4.78% in May." And "Transport inflation accelerated to 4.31% in May." ET. In March, "India's federal government...retained its retail inflation target at 4%, within a comfort band of 2%-6%, according to an official notification. The target will remain in place for five years." Reuters. "India's wholesale inflation quickened to 9.87% in June from 9.68% in May" driven by food, mineral oils, basic materials and chemicals and chemical products. ET. Near double digit increase in input costs will feed into the broader economy. Transport inflation is waiting. "Much commentary on the West Asia crisis has focused on what consumers pay at the pump," but "Fuel costs for fleet operators, raw material costs for small manufacturers, and gas prices for processing units have risen substantially. Some has been passed on. A meaningful part has not." "At household-level the impact is not yet visible." "When it does, second-order effects begin to show up. Household budgets will face pressure, discretionary consumption could soften." DH. In June, the RBI projected CPI inflation at 5.1% for the financial year 2026-27, from its earlier forecast of 4.6% (DH) but chose to hold its interest rate at 5.25%. Despite its mandate of targeting 4%, the RBI's recent record indicates that it actually set itself a target of 6% for its monetary policy. Starting October 2019, the inflation rate was well above 4% till February 2025, falling to a low of 0.4% in October, before starting to accelerate from February 2026. rateinflation.com. The RBI brazenly held its interest rate at 4% from May 2020 to May 2022 (shriram- finance.in) even as inflation was raging at above 7% and was forced to act in panic after the US Federal Reserve started hiking its Funds Rate aggressively from May 2022 (Forbes). "India's exports rose 15.5% year-on-year ton $40.41 billion in June, while the trade deficit widened to a five-month high of $30.43 billion," because '"crude oil imports jumped 40% to $19.32 billion during the month, the country's overall merchandise imports in June went up by about 31% to $70.84 billion." DH. "India's exports to the US dipped 1.21% to USD 8.17 billion in June, while imports grew 33.86% year-on-year to USD 5.5 billion, according to government data." ET. Our exports to the US fell even as "US consumer spending accelerate in May even as prices rose at the fastest pace in more than three years, suggesting Americans are powering through the fallout from the Iran war." ET. High inflation should push bond yields higher but "India's long bond yields have stayed remarkably placid through it all. Part of the explanation is deliberate engineering." The RBI has allowed banks to offer higher interest rates on non-resident foreign currency (FCNR) accounts while the government has scrapped withholding and capital gains tax on foreign holders of government bonds, hoping to draw over $50 billion from overseas and ease the pressure on the rupee. This will help the RBI not to increase interest rates. Meanwhile, household debt has risen to 45.5% of GDP, of which 58.4% is comprised of credit cards, personal loans and gold loans. "The biggest beneficiary of this low-rate regime is not the stressed household. It is the biggest borrower in the room, the government." "Signs of rising defaults in the small loans segment aren't surprising," wrote Ajit Ranade. Is the RBI the Reserve Bank of India - for Indians, - the cooperative bank for the government or the private bank for the BJP? Indians would like to know why we are borrowing to survive? Enemy within?