The y-on-y wholesale price inflation dropped marginally in April offering much-needed relief for the government. It may also help in easing pressure on the Reserve Bank of India to increase rates.

According to the figures released on Friday, wholesale prices increased by 9.59% in April on a year-on-year basis, while the percentage of increase was 9.9 during March and 10 in February. The weakening of wholesale price inflation was expected, though RBI had earlier said that inflation was ‘worrisome’ and may force its hand to go in for a rate hike for the third time this year.

There are other factors that may contribute in holding RBI from proceeding with a rate hike. The manufacturing growth for March was below par at 13.5%. The European debt debacle is also causing jitters in the market. All these may prompt RBI to postpone rate hike at least till its next quarterly policy review scheduled for July.

Inflation in manufacturing sector dropped from 7.1% in March to 6.7% in April. Fuel price inflation too eased from 12.7% to 12.55. However, the food price inflation remained relentless by rising marginally from 16.65% to 16.87%. RBI was concerned that the food price inflation will spill over to the manufacturing sector. With the inflation in the manufacturing sector abating, RBI may not push in for a between-review rate hike, as it did two times earlier this year to contain inflation.

One of the major factors for inflation is crude oil prices, which has moderated in the aftermath of European crisis. The strengthening of rupee is also helping in keeping the prices down for the Indian government. However, the situation still has many pitfalls ahead, in case crude oil prices shoot up. If subsidized, the fiscal deficit will widen, if the price rise is passed on to the consumer, it will lead to further worsening of inflation.

Akshay Kumar has reasons to smile. His much hyped ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ has managed to build a good hype amongst the audiences, something which is reflecting from the favourable response that it has received via a healthy advance booking. Though quite a few multiplexes and single screens opened their advance booking only on Wednesday (which is the norm), some major chains (like PVR) opened it early as Sunday to gauge audience’s interest in the film. Thankfully, it was all positive, something which would definitely have contributed to sudden plans for paid previews that were hosted on Thursday.

However, Sajid Nadiadwala and Co. took a guarded approach as instead of going ballistic with paid previews and playing multiple shows all through the evening and night, they kept it low profile with only a show each at select multiplexes in major cities. Moreover, the show timings were also quite late in the night with some of them beginning as late as 11 PM. Obviously, the makers and especially the leading man Akshay Kumar have learnt the lesson from ‘Chandni Chowk To China’ debacle where negative reviews had started flowing as early as 9 PM Thursday night once the first paid preview (at 6PM) had come to a close.

Though sources indicate that the makers of ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ are quite confident of their product, it made sense to have a restricted viewing of the film rather than it being a wholesome affair, lest it led to any negativity. In any case, record number of prints are being circulated across the country which means that opening weekend collections should be quite a bountiful.

There have been murmurs around the promos not being really strong for this Akshay and Kareena starrer. However, one just hopes that the team of ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ is hiding the real stuff in the background rather than revealing it all in the promos itself; a mistake that recent release ‘Paying Guest’ made and suffered badly. It would be better for a film with such a huge scale to let audiences warm up to the film and that’s a path this Sabbir Khan directed film seems to be taking.

As are the indicators right now, the film should fetch good numbers in the opening weekend even if they aren’t record breaking per se. While ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ and ‘Singh Is Kinng’ hold the record of netting 40 crores or more in their first week (with ‘Ghajini’ going through the ceiling with a 60 crores + opening, it would be fair if ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ crosses 35 crores mark at the least. This is where the film seems to be headed as well and even though a few may complain that these collections would be less for an Akshay Kumar biggie, one has to keep in mind that he has suffered two recent flops in ‘Chandni Chowk To China’ and ’8X10 Tasveer’, something which is looming large on audience’s mind. Moreover, 35 crores is not a bad number too as long as the film can sustain in weeks to come.

With ‘Shortkut – The Con Is On’ being the only major release in week to follow and ‘Jashnn’ arriving on 17th July, ‘Kambakkth Ishq’ now has to be just a decent enough film to keep showing steady collections before ‘Luck’ arrives on 24th July.