Soaring vegetable prices

Winter is the season when the countryside witnesses a boom in vegetable production. The season being dry and devoid of the risk of floods, thousands of farmers across the state look forward to this season to produce the best of their vegetables, while the consumers too wait eagerly to this season to buy fresh vegetables. But what has come up as a huge issue is the soaring prices of all kinds of vegetables across Assam in the past few weeks. There is hardly any vegetable available for less than Rs 60 a kilogram, while carrots and a few other items have crossed the Rs 100 mark. The price of the humble potato, the all-season must for every home, has also touched an all-time high, not to speak of its inseparable partner, the onion. Looking back, one finds that the prices of vegetables had never been so unimaginably high in Assam. It is not that there is a short supply of vegetables. Farmers have not raised the selling price of vegetables at the ground level.

The government has not imposed any tax whatsoever on vegetables. The local urban bodies are not known to have imposed any kind of exorbitant entry tax on vehicles transporting vegetables from the rural centres to the urban markets. Moreover, the average price of most winter vegetables in most other states of the country have remained at a much lower level in comparison to those prevalent in Assam. Most importantly, a simple enquiry will probably reveal that the farmer is not even getting even one-fourth of the price at which vegetables are being currently being sold, be it in Guwahati, or be it in any town or urban centre across the state. The government has been occasionally claiming that agricultural production has been rapidly increasing in the state in the past few years. There has not been any huge increase in the price of various farm inputs like seeds, fertilizer, pesticide or even electricity required to run irrigation pumps. Then, what is the problem? And, where?

The Agriculture minister has remained silent on the issue, and so has the Food and Civil Supply minister. What the common people have noticed in the media are reports about the Supply minister making occasional appeals to the vegetable vendors and wholesalers not to increase prices. It is unfortunate that no one has bothered to heed to or respond to the Supply Minister's appeal. Even a child can find out what are the prices of the same vegetables in other cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai and compare those with Guwahati. Prices of most winter vegetables in Delhi are less than half of what are being charged in Guwahati, or for that matter in Tezpur, Dibrugarh, Nagaon or Jorhat. What appears is that a chain of middle-men are working overtime to impose all kinds of so-called 'taxes' – including probably donations by political parties, other organizations – on the movement of vegetables from the farms to the retail markets and vendors, many of whom allegedly have the kind blessings of the powers that be. If this is true, then the situation definitely calls for an immediate intervention of the Chief Minister. If prices of vegetables are so high in the winter season, then the common man, who has already suffered enough due to the lockdown induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, must now prepare to purchase one kilogram of brinjal or cabbage at not less than Rs 200 five or six months from now, when rains will change the agricultural scenario.