Inflation and the Hard Truths: Taming the Beast

By Mohammad Omar Farooq

Inflation is often treated as a technical malfunction-something to be corrected with interest rates, budget tightening, or short-term administrative controls. In Bangladesh, these tools have been used repeatedly. Inflation persists.

Inflation and the Hard Truths argues that this persistence is not a policy accident but a systemic outcome shaped by incentive structures, enforcement capacity, and coordination failures. Prices do not rise in a vacuum. They are formed along supply chains where market power, weak competition, selective enforcement, and fragmented governance interact-often blunting the effectiveness of otherwise sound policies.

Written by an economist but for a broad, policy-oriented audience, this book moves beyond textbook explanations to examine how inflation actually forms, spreads, and hardens in institutionally constrained and partially captured systems. It explains why conventional tools often stall, why growth alone does not guarantee price stability, and why inflation control cannot succeed without credible competition, accountability, and enforcement.

The book makes a clear, evidence-grounded case that inflation in Bangladesh can be stabilized and gradually reduced-without sacrificing growth-but only through a coordinated, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. It presents a practical framework linking monetary and fiscal policy with market oversight, competition policy, trade management, law enforcement, judicial accountability, and information-driven citizen engagement that reinforces policy credibility.

This is not a call for repression or austerity. It is a call for state capacity and governance effectiveness.

Inflation and the Hard Truths is for policymakers, students, journalists, business leaders, development practitioners, and citizens who want to understand why prices keep rising-and what it will truly take to tame the beast.

Table of Contents

Why inflation matters?
A note to economists

Part I - Understanding the Beast

Chapter 1: Inflation in Everyday Life
Chapter 2: How Inflation Is Supposed to Work (and Why That Story Falls Short)
Chapter 3: Bangladesh's Inflation Pattern -- What makes inflation persistent here

Part II - Where the System Breaks Down

Chapter 4: Supply Chains, Power, and Price Formation
Chapter 5: Syndicates, Patronage, and Market Distortions
Chapter 6: The Limits of Monetary and Fiscal Policy Alone

Part III - The Captured Economy

Chapter 7: Inflation in a Captured System
Chapter 8: Ethics, Corruption, and Inflation

Part IV - Taming the Beast Is Possible

Chapter 9: Growth, Productivity, and Inflation Control
Chapter 10: A Whole-of-Government Inflation Strategy
Chapter 11: Law, Accountability, and Deterrence

Part V - Society as a Reform Force

Chapter 12: Organized Citizens at the Choke Points
Chapter 13: Organized Consumers and Market Discipline

Part VI - The Policy Framework

Chapter 14: A Coordinated Framework to Stabilize and Reduce Inflation
Chapter 15: Political Will, Popular Support, and Reform Survival
Chapter 16: From Structural Inflation to Stability

Conclusion: From a Captured System to a Capable State

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H1C1WN24
• ISBN13: 9798196370557
• Release Date: May 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 126 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"