Retail Inflation at 4.82 Percent in August 2026: CPI Data

The correct answer is 4.82 per cent. This is the provisional year on year rate for August 2026 compared with August 2025, worked out on the Consumer Price Index whose base year is 2024 equals 100. Options A and B are wrong because neither figure is the headline combined rate announced for August; candidates who half remember an earlier month or a sector rate tend to fall for them. Option D is wrong because 5.95 per cent is food inflation for August 2026, measured by the Consumer Food Price Index, which is a different series from the general index. The two numbers are put out on the same day and are very easy to mix up, so link the general rate of 4.82 per cent with all items taken together and the higher rate of 5.95 per cent with food alone. Also note that the rural rate of 5.23 per cent and the urban rate of 4.31 per cent sit on either side of the combined headline figure.

The correct answer is rural 5.23 per cent and urban 4.31 per cent. In August 2026 villages saw prices rise faster than cities, and the release gives these two figures against a combined headline rate of 4.82 per cent. Option A simply reverses the two rates, and reversing rural and urban numbers is the commonest trap set in this kind of question, so the order must be read carefully. Option C is wrong because those are the rural and urban rates of food inflation for the same month, taken from the Consumer Food Price Index rather than from the general index; they are genuine figures but they answer a different question. Option D is wrong because those numbers do not belong to August at all. A useful way to hold all of this together is to note that in this release the rural number is larger than the urban number in both the general series and the food series.

The correct answer is silver jewellery, which stood first among the key items with high inflation in August 2026. Option B is wrong because ginger came second on that list, below silver jewellery. Option A is wrong because onion was placed third. Option D is wrong because garlic was fourth, and jewellery of gold, diamond and platinum was fifth, which means that two of the five fastest rising items were forms of jewellery. Candidates should also remember the other end of the table, since paper setters often ask about the items that grew cheaper instead: tomato recorded the steepest fall, followed by potato, then motor car and jeep, then lady's finger, and finally parwal and kundru. Learning the order in both tables is worth the effort, because questions are set either on the item that rose most or on the item that fell most, and the two lists are published together every month.