New Delhi, Nov. 5: Sarkari economics has finally stepped out of an impregnable edifice and reached the kitchen table.

The government today started releasing inflation data on food separately, revealing how a traditional all-encompassing figure had been masking the spurt in prices of items that affect common people the most.

The numbers for October 24 — the data will be released every week — show that food prices have risen 13.39 per cent over the past year.

However, the wholesale price index (WPI) — the earlier weekly fixture now made a monthly affair — cannot reflect this rise because manufacturing, not food, gets more weightage in the data.

The stress on manufacturing had made the WPI largely irrelevant to households, an anomaly that has been set right now by the data on primary articles, which include food.

The October 24 data disclosed today somewhat reflect the pinch households have been facing, unlike the WPI figure a week earlier that put inflation at just 1.51 per cent.

The new figures confirm the steady rise in the prices of potato, onion, rice and milk — something millions of homemakers were aware of but government records did not faithfully mirror.

Not that the new data will make the bite less painful. But the change will prevent the government from adding insult to injury by crowing that inflation is dipping while people are forking out more for food.

“I want to know one simple thing from the government data — how much extra will I have to spend on edible items. The inflation figures made no sense to me,” said Anusha Pachisia, a homemaker in a family of five in Burrabazar.

Forecasting food prices is a tricky business. But today’s data suggest a dip may be taking hold.