New Delhi, Sept. 22 -- The six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) will meet in early October to decide their next move. There are three main reasons why a growing number of economists, traders and financial market participants believe that the committee will hike the main policy interest rate in India much before they had expected, perhaps in its next meeting itself.

First, the minutes of the previous MPC meeting show that many of its members were signalling that interest rates would have to be increased as soon as there was clear evidence that price pressures were spreading across the Indian economy, beyond a few sectors.

Second, the inflation data for August that was released earlier this month not only showed a sharp spik...