New Delhi, March 31 -- The Centre's decision to renew the Indian central bank's Flexible Inflation Targeting (FIT) framework for another five years till March 2031 is no surprise. Given today's climate of uncertainty, with no clarity on when the war in West Asia will end, any change at this juncture would have risked rocking the boat. Needlessly.

Hence this status quo on the overall framework, including the four issues raised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its August 2025 discussion paper. Monetary policy will continue to target headline inflation, as mandated under the FIT regime adopted in 2016, not core inflation (which strips out volatile items like food and fuel).

This is a wise call, since food accounts for a significant sh...