Document Actions
Ohmygod... Tomatoes at Rs. 45 per Kg
It is heard that the vegetable prices in India are reaching astronomical proportions with a simple thing such as tomatoes costing Rs. 45 per kg. On the same page there is new of government package to prevent farmer suicides. How do these seemingly opposite events tie with each other?
Not long ago when I was back in Bangalore just over an year back, we had purchased tomatoes for Rs. 3 per kg and even then at this (comparitively) measly price my mother used to haggle and bargain with the shop keeper that he is ripping us off and he should reduce the price. So really what happened in the past one year that made the price of a common vegetable like tomato to grow 1500%.
If tomato had been a stock, the owners would have been rich beyond belief and conspiracy theories would have been abound as to how such an unthinkable thing could have happened. But tomato is not a stock and no one is getting rich except maybe the middlemen.
I say middlemen and not the farmers. Why? On the same page where I read this piece of news where government is artificially bringing down the price of tomatoes to a seemingly bearable Rs. 20 per kg from its current Rs. 45 per kg, I read another piece where the government is proposing a package to prevent farmer suicide. It's not only tomatoes that are expensive. Every basic commodity is expensive and basically going out of the reach of the middle and lower middle class, which forms the backbone of modern urban India.
So where does the money go? It is said that the price has gone up because the supply is trailing. But then who is creating the lag? The farmers don't have the necessary equipment nor desire to hoard the vegetables as they are perishable. So it comes down to the fact that the middlemen are essentially hoarding the goods and exploiting both the farmers and the consumers. It simply is not possible to achieve this without some pay-offs and high ranking people being involved. So all this thing stinks to me as a sure sign of scam. Its time now for the people to take to streets and fight this to control such practices.
