The CPI-M on Thursday maintained that it was a 'misnomer' to use the wholesale price index as a yardstick to measure inflation and said the government had failed to check the rise in prices of essential commodities.
"The WPI is not a true reflection of the burden put on the people through the rise in prices of essential commodities. It is a misnomer to use it as an index for measuring inflation," party leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters.
Quoting the oft-repeated phrase 'statistics, more statistics and damned lies', he said the weightage of the basket of food items to calculate the WPI was 22 per cent as against that of steel products which was 25 per cent.
"So only about one-fifth of the fluctuation in food prices will