Every dog has its day. To-day is tomatoe’s day. Tomatoes have become costlier than petrol. A few days back its price soared to Rs 200/250 per kilo.
In Telangana, a farmer who cultivates tomatoes in his field earned a huge profit of Rs 1.5 cr during the current season. We know that people steal money and valuables. But recently we have noticed three incidents wherein tomatoes are looted. In the first case, a vehicle carrying about 2000 kilos of tomatoes was looted by some miscreants near Bengaluru. In the second incident, on the night of 5th July, some thieves stole about 60 bags of tomatoes from a farm belonging to a woman in Karnataka. Those tomatoes were worth more than Rs. 2.5 lakhs. In the third incident last week, a group of burglars emptied 66 stalls of tomatoes located in Gumla town of Jharkhand. Lately, a noted vegetable vendor in Varanasi has hired bouncers to protect the tomatoes in his store. Many vegetable traders of Telangana have installed CCTV cameras to prevent tomato thefts. These measures show the high worth of tomatoes at the present time.
Not long ago, tomato was just an ordinary item. Sometimes people used to throw eggs and tomatoes towards a speaker on the stage as a symbol of protest. Many a times farmers abandoned tomatoes in their farms without being harvested when their rates were uneconomical. But gone are those days now. Presently, it would be a stupidity to call an exorbitant tomato a vegetable!
Why tomatoes have become so expensive? Experts give 4 reasons for that. They are : 1) extreme heat and late arrival of monsoon resulting in the failure of the crop. 2) Pest infestation on a large scale in key production areas, 3) Torrential rain in tomato growing regions and 4) Climate change. As a result the prices of tomatoes skyrocketed.
Basically, tomato is not an Indian fruit. Tomato, potato and chilli were brought by Portuguese in our country. Earlier, people here used peppers instead of chillies. Later on, this foreign chilli entered our kitchen. It tasted like pepper (Miri) and looked like pod (sang). Therefore, it might have been called ‘Mirsang’ in Konkani. Like chilli, tomato was also an alien. Therefore at many places in India then this glossy red fruit was called ‘Vilayati baigan’ meaning imported brinjal. In Goa, tomatoes were not consumed by Hindus for long during Portuguese rule since goat manure was used as a tomato fertilizer. Another reason for their not eating was that tomatoes were used in the preparation of meat foods then!
Now better days have dawned on tomatoes. Around 12/13 years ago, onion had become an extravagant commodity. There was dramatic rise in the cost of the onions across markets in India. This crisis caused political tension in the country and was described as ‘a grave concern’ by the then PM Manmohan Singh. This strong tasting and smelling bulb brought tears in the eyes of Indian women for quite many days then. Thousands of women then demonstrated against the Government in Delhi putting garlands of onions in their necks.
There is an age-old adage in English: Every dog has its day. And it means that everyone will be successful or lucky at some time or the other.
