बेबाक · Editorial
Price Rises Are Shared Widely, but Protection From Them Is Not
A 3% DA hike shields 1.16 crore indexed Indians while milk, airfares and cyclone losses fall on those with no index at all; relief must reach the unprotected majority.
Who Absorbs the Rise
Four recent reports tell one story. On Wednesday the Union Cabinet approved a 3 per cent increase in Dearness Allowance for central government employees and Dearness Relief for pensioners, which it says will benefit more than 1.16 crore people before the festive season. Elsewhere, an ₹8 rise in the price of milk is expected to push tea and coffee prices up by ₹5. IndiGo has raised average fares as fuel costs climb. Andhra Pradesh has put the loss from Cyclone Arnab at ₹4,600 crore. Costs are rising on several fronts, but the means to cope with them are not evenly spread.
The Case for Each
Each decision has a fair defence. Dearness Allowance is not a festival gift. It is a standing adjustment that keeps the real wages of public servants and the pensions of retirees from wearing away, and delaying it would break faith with them. The milk revision follows earlier increases: ₹4 a litre on April 1, 2025, and, before that, ₹2 a litre in June 2024, when packets were also enlarged by 50 ml. An airline cannot fly at a loss for ever. None of these is reckless on its own terms. The concern lies in how the costs and the protections add up across society.
What the Numbers Show
IndiGo's own results show the strain. Revenue rose 26 per cent year on year to ₹23,364 crore because of higher average yields, yet the airline still recorded a second-quarter net loss of ₹1,879 crore, with fuel costs spiking and passenger demand softening. When even higher fares cannot cover input costs, the burden is passed on to those who pay them. The milk increase reaches every household and every roadside tea stall, including those whose earnings are not tied to any index. In Andhra Pradesh, the state has asked Telangana to deploy 1,000 personnel for power restoration work in the Godavari region, a measure of how much the cyclone has disrupted ordinary life.
An Uneven Shield
The conclusion is uncomfortable but plain. Inflation is felt by everyone, but it is compensated only for those whose incomes are written into a formula. That formula is a sound way to protect public employees, and it should remain. The problem is that the informal worker, the tea seller and the cyclone-hit household have nothing comparable. Growth and price stability are measured in national averages, but people live their lives at the margins of household budgets. A country that indexes salaries promptly while leaving disaster relief and food prices to slower, discretionary processes risks protecting the people least exposed to the shock.
A Fairer Way Forward
Three practical steps would help. First, the central team due to arrive in Andhra Pradesh on October 30 to assess the cyclone damage should finish its assessment and recommend interim relief within a fixed period, so that the cyclone's victims are not left waiting longer than salaried employees wait for their revisions. Second, any administered rise in the price of an essential like milk should come with a published explanation of the costs behind it, and governments should consider targeted support for low-income households when such increases take effect. Third, governments that already index the pay of their own employees should study how a basic cost-of-living adjustment could be extended to welfare entitlements for informal workers. Relief should reach the people most exposed to price shocks, not only those already protected.
Inflation is felt by everyone, but it is compensated only for those whose incomes are written into a formula.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the Aad Tak desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →