Hoping for a miracle as inflation climbs in India

By Jonathan Allen

MUMBAI (Reuters) - With inflation in India reaching a seven-year high, people across the country are looking for a miracle to help them cope with the sharp rises in the cost of food and other essential items.

So when it unexpectedly began raining fish in the monsoon-lashed city of Patna, Dulal Manjhi felt his prayers had been answered, temporarily at least.

"I picked up about a kilo of fish which fell in the monsoon rains on Sunday," said a delighted Manjhi, a road labourer who holds a ration card given to the poorest of the poor.

His family of six cooked the fish with a little rice and were able to put aside the kilo of grain they would have otherwise eaten for the more usual kind of rainy day.

India's coalition government, headed by the centre-left Congress party, has not been so lucky. Despite announcing a continuous dripfeed of measures to control rising prices, the wholesale price index at the end of May was up 8.75 percent on the previous year -- the steepest rise in seven years.

That rate could have risen to a 13-year high of nearly 10 percent at the start of June, a Reuters poll said on Wednesday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party, has attributed a string of state election victories partly to the failure of the Congress to control prices.

With an election due within a year, the government had hoped an ambitious nationwide job-guarantee scheme and an expensive waiver of some farmers' debts would leave poorer Indians in a happier state of mind as they headed into polling booths.