The government on Tuesday came out with a new index on inflation, which showed that the rate of price rise declined by 1.3 percentage points, to a 7-month low of 8.5 per cent in August from the July level of 9.8 per cent. But going by the old inflation series, the rate of price rise dipped from 10 per cent in July, to 9.5 per cent in August. According to the new index, which seeks to capture the price situation in a better way, inflation declined on account of falling prices of food items like vegetables, cereals and pulses.