Fight against the vegetable mafia
Prices of vegetables are soaring all over the country. But in Goa, they are even higher than elsewhere. That is because our vegetables are not grown at home, but come from Belgaum. It is not just the vegetables that are grown outside. Most of Goa’s vegetable sellers are also from neighbouring Karnataka. Goan vegetable sellers are completely marginalised; they mostly sit outside markets with their limited wares.
There appears to be a cartel of wholesale vegetable traders in this state. These people buy veggies by the truckload in Belgaum and re-sell them to traders in Goa. They have a very tight link with big vegetable merchants in Belgaum. Those who try to enter the vegetable business in Goa quickly get isolated; the big suppliers simply refuse to deal with them. The complete monopoly of the vegetable trade by this cartel ensures that vegetable prices in Goa are kept very high.
A cartel that uses such extra-legal means to keep out competition is no different from a mafia.
When the Goa Horticulture Corporation began to set up outlets selling vegetables at reasonable prices, people in Goa heaved a sigh of relief. It appears that the Horticulture Corporation’s fair trade in vegetables, which it has now extended to fruits, has begun to hit the super-profits of Goa’s vegetable mafia. Corporation Chairman Sankalp Amonkar has complained that Belgaum-based wholesale vegetable traders in Karnataka have begun a non-cooperation drive with his Horticulture Corporation.
Mr Amonkar says he is determined that regardless of the attitude of the Belgaum wholesale traders, he will not allow the supply of vegetables to the corporation’s outlets to get affected. That is the right kind of attitude to take. Why shouldn’t Goans get vegetables at reasonable rates? Except for the subsidised onions sold during the ongoing crisis – which has cost the state government over Rs2 crore – the Corporation’s other vegetables are not sold at a loss.
The actual problem is that Goa’s vegetable traders can no longer make the windfall profits they used to, thanks to the corporation’s outlets. And if Belgaum’s traders want to throw in their lot with the profiteers by blacklisting the Goa Horticulture Corporation, it is time the corporation showed them that they are not the only possible source of vegetables for this state, and that other traders in other wholesale markets would be more than happy to sell to Goa.
That’s the way!
Kudos to the Indian Navy and Coast Guard for leading the global fight against piracy. Over the past six months and more, Somali pirates have widened their areas of operation, targeting the busy shipping lanes of the Arabian Sea off Goa and the Lakshadweep islands. A number of ships have come under attack just a few hundred miles off the Indian coast in the past few months.
But aggressive action by the Navy and the Coast Guard has now all but broken the back of the pirates, who have been using three Thai deep sea fishing trawlers that they hijacked off Somalia’s coast in April 2010. All named ‘Prantalay’, they were being used as ‘mother ships’, while the fast skiffs that they carried were used to attack passing ships.
‘Prantalay 14’ was sunk by the Goa-based Navy jet boat INS Cankarso off the Lakshadweep islands just over a week ago. A few days later, ‘Prantalay 11’ was captured, pirates, hostages and all. That leaves only ‘Prantalay 12’, if it hasn’t already decided that discretion is the better part of valour. Taking the fight to the pirates is the way to do it!
