14 January,2011 06:43 AM IST | | Arindam Chaudhuri
There seem to be two commodities that are all set to face each other in a combat mode. On one hand, bidding at IPL-4 is making new records by rendering erstwhile affordable players out of the reach of smaller teams, and on the other, an affordable and staple vegetable ufffd the onion ufffd is all set to make newer records with its price rise, making it unaffordable to almost every consumer!
The prices of onions have been exponentially rising! The onion prices shot up by anywhere between 80 to 150 per cent during the first week of December. The government was aware of the climatic challenges that had created havoc for the crop in Maharashtra and the hoarders who created further bottlenecks. Despite knowing that onions have a legacy of bringing down the governments, what is intriguing is that government chose not to intervene adequately!
Our irrigation system has been a monumental failure, collapsing at the slightest hint of any climatic challenge
As a knee-jerk reaction this time, what the ministry of agriculture did was to ban exports and permit imports. It did provide a temporary relief, but clearly was a hasty and illogical call. As per the reports, the onions that were exported to countries like Pakistan for Rs 20 per kilo, had to be imported back at Rs 45 per kilo! Not to
forget that Pakistan too eventually had to put a ban on exporting to India.
The truth is that onions will keep burning the national pocket till the time structural changes are not made in the agriculture sector! It takes no Einstein to realise that our irrigation system, despite all the years that have passed since Independence, has been a monumental failure, collapsing at the slightest hint of a climatic challenge. With 300 billion dollars of foreign exchange reserves lying with the government and with no creative use in their mind, the least that the government could have done was to plan on spending a meagre 500 million dollars on giving its countrymen onions.
u00a0
This time around, that didn't happen. The hoarders made merry; and the government ufffd being hand in glove with them ufffd did nothing. Many years back, Nehru had said that every hoarder and black marketer should be hanged from the nearest lamppost. That's exactly what the government needed to do. It didn't!
Hopefully, with four things in place ufffd a totally reformed irrigation system to avoid dependence on nature, a direct access to farmers to take their produce to consumers, a strong punishment system for hoarders, and finally, a preplanned import structure just in case there still remains an impending crisis ufffd we will perhaps never see another onion crisis or similar situation again.
