Hair today

Outgoing Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor D Subbarao's fine sense of humour has had little opportunity for play over most of his tenure with inflation and the runaway rupee proving back-to-back crises. Now, with less than a week to go for his stint to end, he was able to enjoy the luxury of making a joke at his own expense at last Friday's Statistics Day Conference. "I know you are all waiting for one statistic, which is how much did the governor pay for his haircut so that you can compute the governor's haircut index of inflation. I have decided not to reveal that number for two reasons," he joked. One, computing the premium he pays the barber would not be realistic given his "non-existing hair". Second, the statisticians at RBI will have to recalibrate their index in a week's time to his successor Professor Raghuram Rajan who has a rather fuller head of hair.