vegetable prices

Rising prices in India have always been the ‘run to’ issue for any political group.It favors everyone except the government. This of course leaving aside the average Indian who has to spend more.Now that it’s Food Prices which are going through the roof, the usual round of chatter has begun. Opposition parties accusing the incumbent government of lackluster action, ineffectiveness and the usual lingo that anyone in India is used to especially when it’s a battle between political parties. None of the rhetoric in any case means squat if prices do not come down. We’ve been harping on rising prices for over a year now, I sincerely hope that this is not the case a year later as well.

Have you ever perhaps wondered “How come the inflation rate has been negative for so long but I’m still stuck paying so much for vegetables and Rice? Their prices aren’t coming down because of inflation; instead they’re going up everyday.”

If you have or want to know in any case then here’s a simple explanation. There are two indices which deal with this particular problem. Inflation on the whole is measured using the Wholesale Price Index (WPI), while the price you pay for your vegetables depends upon the CPI or the Consumer Price Index.

So while the WPI has been negative for over two months, the CPI as luck would have it has drastically increased, the result is therefore that you end up paying a whole lot more for food items .

I have been waiting patiently for quite a while now and speaking frankly at this time of year I wouldn’t be wrong if I said that some degree of honesty from the government would be highly appreciated regarding the great Indian monsoon. The signs are out there aplenty to suggest that this year the monsoon is a failure. The crops aren’t being sown yet, the canals are empty, most importantly it’s not raining, and the water is not there.

It is extremely irritating to see the government’s Agriculture Ministry brow beating all the way around the bush with statement after statement saying that the monsoon will pick up. In our last look at the monsoon we said that we are one step away from declaring that the monsoon is a failure. Today we can indeed say that the rains are not coming this year. However the government has to simply call the situation. Once it declares a drought situation, the country can move on.

What we are instead seeing is a political soap opera for needless reasons, the ones who end up paying the price are a.)The Farmers b.)The Consumers.

A long running rot in India’s agricultural scene is now rearing its ugly head. For long government panels and sanctioned committees had predicted that India would have a problem in maintaining its ability to provide a consistent supply of vegetables and fruits to a nation of a billion but these indications have been consistently brushed under the carpet by whichever political party was or is in power. The result has been an environment where vegetable prices have been on the rise for quite some time. Hit by the increasing rate of inflation, they have now sky rocketed.