Price rise and the aam admi

When the government is claiming that price rise has been negative successively for the last two quarters and that inflation is under control, let us look at the reality of the platter of food that the aam admi has to necessarily imbibe every day to put body and soul together. Dal – Roti or Dal – Chaval is the staple for the common man but with dal in recent times touching a high of Rs. 200 per Kg. when it vanished from the aam admi’s  plate, it has thankfully eased off but is again showing signs of escalating now. For this reason the government has released lately an advice that the price of dal should be capped at Rs. 120 per Kg. Look at the dark humor in this decision since sometime back the price of dal at Rs. 100 per Kg was considered the barrier beyond which it should not climb but once having been managed to rise by hoarders to Rs. 200 per Kg. the government accepts the fact and itself puts out a circular to cap the price at Rs. 120. The idea being that once the old barriers are managed to be surmounted the sanctity of the old barrier is no longer relevant. Roti is mercifully reasonable since wheat at Rs. 35 per Kg. has not shown any dramatic changes in prices lately. Though both wheat and rice are quite expensive now compared to the rates prevailing 2 – 3 years earlier showing escalation of close to 50% for the more affordable quality. Thus with employment not being regular and wages also not going up as much, the aam admi finds it difficult to continue his do waqt ki do roti or mootthi bar chaval with dal on a daily basis. Thus he is forced to cut back on his food with the bill for it going far beyond the money in his pocket. As for subzi, the staple for the aam admi used to be potatoes and onions. Both have over the last couple of years shown dramatic swings in prices with both touching Rs. 80 per Kg and sometimes even the perceived price barrier of Rs. 100. Though lately potatoes are at Rs. 25 per Kg. and of onions there is a bumper harvest it is understood which should bring about a rationalisation of prices now hovering at Rs. 15 per Kg. As for vegetables and fruit it has vanished from the diet of the aam admi and his family except in season for any particular type of vegetable when the prices drop to reasonable levels. The surprising thing about vegetables is that we are told in the summer season the prices will rise because of lesser availability and in the monsoon we are told that prices will rise because of spoilage in the rains and flooding of roads making it difficult to reach the produce to the markets! Thus the pattern for food items has been that with the prices rising for one or the other reason for 6 months of the year they do not go down for the remaining period of the year except when there is a bumper harvest of one or the other item which is also quite rare these days. For fruits with their known seasonality the prices continue to show an upward trend except for some fruits due to bumper crops in a season the prices become affordable. However, the sum and substance is that vegetables and fruits are an infrequent part of the aam admi’s  diet. There is also a pattern here of price control operated by the wholesalers and retailers involved in the produce and commodity trade who knowing that consumers do accept higher price levels, maintain these as much as possible during times of over-supply and pass on reductions either delayed or not to the full extent but only marginally thus earning windfall profits. It also becomes difficult to believe this government and its actions since it deliberately fudges the CPI & WPI indices to show that inflation is under control. Lately Finance Minister Jaitley has also quoted only 4 crore members of the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) while the actual number is 16 crores, four times that mentioned by Jaitley. Such gaffes and their scale surely bring down the credibility of this government a couple of notches. Again another report said that foodgrains running to millions of tonnes in FCI godowns continue to rot with which it would have been possible to feed 8,00,000 persons for a full year. In the present times when the government can set up temporary enclosures, with air-conditioning to boot, in a matter of days for their functions, exhibitions and expos, is it not possible to set up such enclosures to store the foodgrains that FCI allows to rot. Or better still can they not be moved to the marketplace before rotting so that prices can be brought down or by doing that will vested interests in the trade be adversely affected? As time goes by the fate of the aam admi is going from bad to worse and you will see more of his kind being pushed below the BPL.