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Rising prices and low household purchasing power
When the price of a meal rises faster than a family’s income, inflation ceases to be an economic statistic—it becomes a daily ordeal. I wish to draw attention to the relentless escalation of prices of essential commodities, particularly sugar, onions, vegetables and cooking oil, as highlighted in your newspaper.
The recent surge has further strained household budgets, forcing families to cut back on even essential items. For low- and middle-income households, nutritious food, children’s needs and modest recreation are increasingly becoming unaffordable luxuries. Such price volatility also breeds anxiety and may trigger panic buying, fuelling an insidious vicious cycle of artificial scarcity and further inflation.
The crossfire also ensnares small retailers. Escalating wholesale prices, shrinking profit margins and unpredictable supply chains leave them struggling to keep their businesses afloat. Consumers, meanwhile, often mistake unavoidable price increases for profiteering, creating friction between buyers and sellers.
The authorities must address the underlying issues by enhancing market surveillance, reducing hoarding and black marketing, improving supply-chain efficiency, and ensuring timely intervention when prices rise sharply. A transparent mechanism for monitoring essential commodities could also deter unscrupulous intermediaries from profiting excessively.
Inflation must not be allowed to affect the common man adversely. If timely corrective measures are not rolled out, household budgets will fray, small businesses will buckle, and public discontent will snowball.
Dipen Gogoi,
Teok, Jorhat
Fancy Bazar
traffic solution
The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) is going to enforce no-vending, no-parking zones on M.S. Road and H. B. Road in the busy Fancy Bazar area from September 1. No doubt, the initiative, which aims at easing traffic congestion arising from street vending encroachment and unregulated parking in and around the commercial area, must be welcomed. Needless to say, Fancy Bazar regularly sees heavy movement of vehicles, pedestrians and goods carriers round the clock. It needs to be mentioned here that in recent years every administration examined Fancy Bazar's traffic problem and has arrived at more or less the same conclusion that roads were built for a much smaller town quite long back. As a result, the entire area continues to struggle with the growing demands of Guwahati's busiest wholesale and retail markets. The recent editorial, "Guwahati needs decisive action on street vending," rightly pointed out the GMC's chronic failure to streamline street vending in the capital city, which only reflects a deep institutional failure and a glaring lack of administrative will. What is now needed is better coordination among the departments to ensure smooth implementation of measures to check the clutter and chaos choking the city's major market streets, including Fancy Bazar. The capital city's dwellers' improvement in the ease of living index largely depends on streamlining street vending and parking across the city.
Iqbal Saikia,
Guwahati