The rise in prices of vegetables, fruits, milk and protein-rich food items like meat, fish and eggs comes as no surprise if one has seen the huge fluctuations in prices of these items in the last few years. If you look back at the headlines over these years, they are about rising vegetable prices, prices shooting through the roof and how the common man cannot go near them. This year alone June-July saw vegetable prices soar and each time there is a different excuse. It’s either floods in the north or heavy rains in Maharashtra that allegedly cause the shortages. The most recent is onions. Good quality onions were selling at between `80 and `100 a kg. Tomatoes and vegetables, which were being exported to flood-ravaged Pakistan, are suddenly in short supply. Vegetables have shot up by 25-30 per cent. The onion crop, we are told, was destroyed in huge quantities because of prolonged and unseasonal rains. But what is surprising is that as soon as the food inflation figures were out, and there was a noise made in the media and in political circles, the prices of onions suddenly slumped. Medium-size onions were down to `35 a kg from `45 a kg — they suddenly fell 38 per cent in three days. How is this possible if it is was not hoarding? The hoarders realised that since imports were allowed duty-free and exports banned, their goose would be cooked. So they quickly brought out their hoarded stocks, according to those in the know.
Granted that the country has seen floods and drought and late monsoons and unseasonal rains, but why is it that a trillion-dollar-plus economy is so dependent on the whimsies of the weather gods? And when the government knows, as the agricultural and civil supplies ministry should know, that there will be a shortage, why don’t they take immediate steps to curb exports? They act only when protests get too loud. Why is no action taken against hoarders?
This newspaper has consistently asked that the agricultural ministry come out with a white paper on how it intends to increase agriculture produce within a time frame. We have agriculture minister Sharad Pawar making off-the-cuff statements, but never anything specific. Why is it that this trillion-dollar-plus economy can’t even produce eggs at reasonable rates? One can understand difficulties about meat, which is exported in a big way, and fish, but eggs? If, as it is said, that the price of poultry feed has gone up and therefore eggs are expensive, why can’t the country provide for enough poultry feed? It does not need rocket science know-how for this. Or is it easier to produce a rocket to go into space than it is to produce poultry feed that is reasonably priced so that eggs remain within the affordability of the common man? India is one of the few countries where a family spends 70 per cent of its budget on food. It is a shame because when prices soar like they have just now, it sends their budgets haywire.
There is a lot of criticism about the agricultural policy being wrong, about farmers being strangled by ceilings, etc. If there is merit in any of the criticisms, why is it that the government or an empowered group of ministers cannot sit together to once and for all find the right solution? It is facetious to say that supply is not keeping up with demand; why is it that we never hear Mr Pawar saying we are going to see that supply keeps pace with demand? Is it not more important to worry about the need for producing enough food to feed a growing population than to worry more about the fact that people need a new luxury hill station?