Soft options are not particularly effective to take hard issues head on. But, that is exactly the way it has been with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) II government, a captive of various vested interests, whose please-all policy seems to have forgotten the poor and the common man in the process. For instance, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) latest 0.25 per cent bank (repo) rate increase provides a clear signal that the country’s central bank has given up on fighting inflation. It suggests, if anything, the RBI’s near capitulation to the wishes of the government, big business, foreign financial institutions (FIIs) and stock market on the inflation management issue.