New Delhi, Feb. 13 -- India's inflation basket has witnessed a sharp reset after over a decade, and it proved to be an anticlimax of sorts.

Going into the inflation data released on Thursday, the hypothesis was: Our inflation measurement was highly outdated, and the monthly numbers we got-and, by extension, our monetary policy decisions-may not have been grounded in reality for some years.

But as it turns out, at face value, the major overhaul in the base year, consumption patterns, and methodology did not quite alter the country's inflation story as we have known it in the last few years. Let's break down the maths of it.

The statistics ministry released the inflation data for January 2026, the first with a base year of 2024, reportin...