India is discovering, once again, that inflation is not always born in spreadsheets, wage negotiations or fiscal excess. Sometimes, it arrives from the sky. Or, more precisely, from its absence. A heatwave pushing temperatures towards 47°C across northern India, a power grid stretched by air conditioners and fans, a monsoon expected to disappoint, and oil prices kept brutally high by the war around Iran: the ingredients are familiar, almost archaic. Food, energy, weather. The old trilogy. The one modern economists prefer to relegate to footnotes, until it returns, with the elegance of a brick through a window.

For the Reserve Bank of India, the timing could hardly be worse. Inflation had spent much of last year behaving itself, helped by softer vegetable prices and allowing policymakers to contemplate a period of cautious comfort. The RBI’s forecast of 4.6% inflation for the fiscal year beginning in April now looks less like a base case than a hope dressed as prudence. Economists are already moving towards 5%, while Bloomberg Economics warns that a weak monsoon could push inflation to 5.8%. This is not a marginal issue in India. Food still accounts for 37% of the consumer price index, even after recent revisions that reduced its official weight. In a country where more than 60% of the population lives in rural areas and depends directly or indirectly on agriculture, a failed monsoon is not just a meteorological event. It is an income shock, a demand shock, a political shock and, ultimately, a monetary policy shock.

The brutal irony is that India may be hit twice by the same climate event. First through the field, where weaker rains damage sowing, crops and rural incomes. Then, through the pump, as farmers turn to diesel irrigation to compensate for the missing rain. When crude oil is above $100 a barrel, because the Gulf has once again reminded Asia of its energy dependence, irrigation itself becomes inflationary. The rain does not fall, so diesel is burned. Diesel becomes expensive, so food becomes expensive. Food becomes expensive, so the central bank is blamed. The gods of economics have a dark sense of humour. The external backdrop makes the problem nastier. India is deeply exposed to Gulf energy flows, including crude oil and LPG. The disruption around Hormuz, the shrinking availability of Russian floating crude, and the fading usefulness of alternative supply routes all threaten to turn what might have been a seasonal food-price problem into a broader inflationary squeeze. For India, unlike China, there is no vast strategic cushion large enough to make the shock disappear. There is only improvisation, and improvisation is rarely deflationary.

This leaves the RBI in an uncomfortable position. Growth remains solid, with the central bank expecting around 6.9% expansion, but that strength is no longer a free pass. If food and fuel rise together, the old argument for waiting becomes fragile. A prolonged pause in monetary policy may still be the desired path, but a bad monsoon would narrow it sharply. The RBI may not want to tighten. The weather may make that choice for it. Some comfort exists. India has stronger rice and wheat buffers than in the past. Irrigation is better. Seeds are more resilient. El Niño shocks do not automatically translate into the agricultural damage they once did. This is the official reassurance, and it is not entirely wrong.

But reassurance is not a hedge. The real risk is timing. If the rains in July and August disappoint, the key sowing months will be affected. Rural demand, which had only begun to recover, could lose momentum. Food inflation would return, energy costs would amplify it, and the RBI would face the classic emerging-market trap: tighten policy and hurt growth, or wait and watch inflation expectations quietly deteriorate. India’s problem is therefore not merely that inflation may rise. It is that inflation may return in its least manageable form: not from overheating demand, but from heat itself; not from excess credit, but from insufficient rain; not from domestic exuberance, but from imported energy fragility. The monsoon, once again, is not a weather forecast. It is a macroeconomic variable. And this year, it may become India’s most powerful central banker.