More than half of major Indian states are facing higher rural inflation vs urban

India's rural inflation for the previous month stood at 5.34 percent, significantly higher than the urban CPI rate that came in at 4.78 percent.

In line with the all-India trend, more than half of the 22 major states and union territories faced higher rural inflation compared to urban areas in February 2024, according to a government release. The release covered 22 major states and union territories that have a population of over 50 lakh as per 2011 census data.

India's rural inflation for the previous month stood at 5.34 percent, significantly higher than the urban Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of 4.78 percent.

Ten out of the 22 major states and union territories registered rural inflation rates higher than the national average.

Data released by the Statistics Ministry on March 12 showed that India's combined (rural and urban) headline retail inflation rate was largely unchanged at 5.09 percent in February compared to 5.10 percent in January.

While CPI inflation remained within the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) tolerance range of 2 percent to 6 percent for the sixth consecutive month, it has now spent 53 months in a row above the medium-term target of 4 percent.

Only ten states and union territories had retail inflation rates lower than the all-India number for February 2024. And just three - Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand had CPI levels that fell within the RBI's medium-term target of 4 percent in February 2024.

Odisha saw the highest combined retail inflation rate for February 2024 at 7.55 percent, followed by Telangana and Haryana. While, at 2.42 percent, India’s capital Delhi witnessed the least amount of price pressures among the major states and union territories.

Assam at 6.02 percent and Jharkhand at 5.85 percent also featured among the top five that exhibited the highest retail inflation rates in February 2024.

Interestingly, barring Telangana, wherein retail inflation rose to 6.71 percent in February from 6.34 percent in January 2024, the CPI rates for the rest in the top five remained unchanged sequentially.

The top five states or union territories with the lowest rates of retail inflation in the previous month included Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, and Bihar, according to data from Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

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Among them, Uttarakhand saw the steepest fall in CPI inflation sequentially to 3.95 percent last month from 4.61 in January 2024.

The story runs the same when it comes to rural inflation with Odisha at 7.60 percent registering the highest CPI rate followed by Haryana at 7.50 percent during the previous month.

Odisha again ranked first among major states and union territories with the highest urban retail inflation at 7.32 percent. But this time Telangana took  the second place at 6.64 percent followed by Rajasthan in the third spot at 6.31 percent, as per data for February 2024.