The Accident of Class, Whose Inflation?

Accident of Class

Hit and run - image generated on DALL-E

We slowed to turn into our lane, and in the dim street light, I saw a knot of people on the pavement. 

“Looks like an accident”, Kanika swivelled her head. I stopped, and set the hazard lights of my car blinking.

“It was a hit-and-run”, one young man said, as we approached the disjointed angles of a human body splayed on crooked paving stones.

Someone propped him up, asked whom we should inform. His head lolled insensibly, his eyes rolled open for an instant, then the eyelids flopped shut again. “He’s drunk.”

“Search his pockets, maybe there’s an ID”. 

Kanika was handed a wad of notes, 

“You keep this money, or the police will take it away.”

I found an invoice, from Kesri Agencies, Dwarka, for a delivery of butter he’d just made. I called the mobile number listed, but there was no response.

We tried calling for an ambulance. No response.

“Let’s call the police helpline”, someone suggested. 

“They don’t help”, the idea was vetoed.

“Put him in the backseat of our car, we’ll drive him to Malviya Hospital”.

Not quite an adult, with only a hint of facial hair, Arun perched himself next to the bleeding face, and guided me to the gate of the hospital. On the way, he called a friend, asked him to get to the hospital on his cycle. Others from the accident site had already reached, and Amarjit, an earnest small-made Sikh, was trying to coax some contacts from the victim’s phone.

“Register him as ‘Unknown’”, one shift doctor instructed, then turned back to deal with a hysterical woman with high blood pressure. 

“Try the fingerlock”, Arun figured; Amarjit pressed an inert finger onto the phone screen, and was able to make a video call to the last number dialled. 

“Is this your Papa?”, turning the phone camera to her father, limp in a wheel chair. 

“Tell your Mama you all need to come to Malviya Hospital”,

“Take him to Safdarjung Hospital”, one doctor said, refusing to engage with our patient.

An unhitched monitor beeped every two seconds, Amarjit dialled the ambulance service again, and Kanika turned to me - “They should give him some first aid, at least.. I think a stiff dose of upper class pressure is required”

“Which doctor is examining this patient?” I enquired loudly. Three doctors turned to me. One inserted a fresh sheet onto a clip-board, and jumped up to record his vitals. 

Looking on, a young woman pleaded,“Take my father’s blood pressure too - he’s a heart patient.”

A senior doctor emerged from her office, and the atmosphere turned urgent. In seconds, she assessed the players involved, asked me a couple of questions, and instructed that he be taken into the minor operation theater. One of our boyish supporters turned to me with a grin and a thumbs up sign. Even the very young know how the system works.

Under the piercing blue light of the surgical room, we could see a long gash that began from just under his chin, traced the entire line of his mandible, then turned up into the fleshless hollow between his jaw and his cheek. The doctor’s assistants threaded a needle to stitch up the wound, and asked for help to steady the patient. Two of the boys held down his legs, two others his head, stoic in their seva, while I retreated into the ante-room, where several wounded men waited their turn.

Amarjit reported that the ambulance was two minutes away. And the family on their way to Malviya Hospital? Amarjit had already redirected them to the trauma center at Safdarjung.

The surgery door opened, the wound had been stitched and dressed, and even as we unhooked the dextrose bottle from its stand, the surgical staff called for the next patient requiring stitches. The stretcher trolley just outside the door looked crippled, leaning towards the leg which lacked a wheel. 

“I saw one at the entrance”, one lad remembered, and they rushed off to wheel it in. 

“What a spirit of solidarity”, Kanika remarked.

The ambulance driver was at my elbow, but needed the medical summary before he could transport the patient. I towered over one doctor while he completed the document. Not so fast - it needed to be photocopied. I trailed the peon to the photocopying room. The machine wouldn’t work. 

“Now?” I pushed him. 

Reluctantly, he peeped into the lady doctor’s office. I gestured at the document - we need a photocopy. In seconds, she made it happen. 

I accompanied the driver to his ambulance. The patient was already installed in the rear, two boys on the bench beside him. Amarjit waited to follow them to Safdarjung Hospital on his scooter. It was past 11 pm. We asked if we could be excused from the next phase of the journey. By way of farewell, Amarjit said, 

“Just a few days ago, I stopped for another accident. I tried to flag cars down, to take the victim to hospital, but no one would stop.”

“Why didn’t you call for an ambulance?”, I asked.

“It wouldn’t have been able to get there, in the rush-hour traffic, so I thought I could take him in someone’s car. But not a single car stopped.”

Whose Inflation?

Government economists need an inflation number to help set monetary policy. The last consumer price number came in at 6.8%, well above the comfort zone of 4%, plus or minus 2 %, and the Reserve Bank of India was obliged to write to the government, explaining why it had failed in its primary duty to ensure that household costs were not being held under check.

In the best traditions of policy transparency, we don’t know what that letter contained. What we do know - from the selfsame RBI - is that Indian households are still very concerned about inflation. For the last eight months, the average Indian consumer has continued to expect that its living costs will climb at a rate of between 9.3 and 10.2% per annum - well above any official estimates. 

While policy making requires aggregate, or average, numbers, each individual’s experience of inflation is unique, decided by the basket of what he or she purchases. My own expenditure is not sexist - I buy my own groceries, even if I usually dine at my sister’s table - but it is terribly classist. As an affluent, retired person, the largest line item on my annual budget is travel - air tickets, hotels, car rentals, and dining out. 

My experience of inflation over the last year is best described by the term ‘Sticker price shock’.

An economy air fare to Bangalore, which ran to five or six thousand until last year, now costs nine to ten thousand rupees a pop. This summer, when we flew to Europe for a wedding in the family, the cheapest tickets cost seventy thousand per head. Until 2019, you could get a return trip to Germany or Switzerland for below forty thousand. 

Fine dining in Delhi, too, has become extremely expensive, and though I don’t have precise reference points, like I do with air tickets, I would estimate my average bill for a restaurant lunch has gone up by 40 to 50% in the last 3 years.

I am not a wage earner, and the way I have kept up with inflation over the years is by trying to ensure the value of my investments stay ahead of the cost of my living. In 2022, this goal has come under threat - the Nifty is up only 5 or 6%, and the cost of goods and services I consume is up by way more.

It’s great for a sense of national pride to proclaim that Indian stock markets are the best performing markets in the world, as indeed they have been, in 2022. But, if they have been beaten by inflation - which is savagely true in my case - then they have not performed their primary function, which is to preserve the buying power of my accumulated savings. I’ve grown my wealth over the decades by staying steadily invested in equities, so I’m not about to make any despondent moves, but more recent entrants to equities are more likely to be skittish. 

I urge new investors to be wary of Indian equity markets in 2023. Our share indices are priced as if we are a rapidly growing economy, but this is not backed by data. GST collections have grown by just over 3% in the eleven months of 2022, and if you remove collections on account of imports, our domestic collections have grown by just over 1%. 

The RBI - which is a rich mine of data - puts out a survey of consumer confidence every two months. The latest numbers show that the household recovery from COVID is still lukewarm. With a base figure of 100, consumer confidence for November came in at 83, a slight improvement from September, but still a long slow climb back to normal levels.

Nothing in the economic environment - either Indian or global - suggests a major surge in economic activity is imminent. Quite the opposite, with weak sentiments around the globe, and rising interest rates. If you are tempted by the safe haven of bank deposits, especially with the higher rates on FDs, yield to temptation. A retreat to safety is warranted.