NEW DELHI: India’s ruling Congress government has accused traders of cheating consumers as it struggles to reduce the cost of the vegetable known as the “poor man’s food” ahead of a string of state polls.
The price of onions, a staple in Indian cooking, has gone through the roof in the past few months, quadrupling to as much as Rs100 a kilogram ($1.65) in parts of the country and turning the vegetable into an unaffordable luxury for the poor.
Traders are “cheating consumers,” Food Minister K V Thomas said in remarks aired yesterday, appealing for onions to be sold at “affordable rates”.
They “should not loot consumers”, he added. The politically sensitive rise in the price of onions comes ahead of five regional assembly polls in November and December, seen as a dress rehearsal for general elections due by May 2014.
The Congress-led government has been struggling to curb imports to counter a record current account deficit, the broadest measure of trade.
But such is its alarm as the state elections near that it plans to import thousands of tonnes of onions to reduce prices.
India is the world’s second-biggest onion grower after China and normally exports onions, but it has floated a tender to import onions to check the spiral in prices. The state-run National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) “is interested in importing onions of Pakistan, Iran, China and Egypt origin”, the co-operative said in the tender issued earlier in the week. NAFED expects to take a decision on the onion tender next Tuesday, Thomas said.
But supplies from abroad may take weeks to arrive, commodity experts say. The ruling Congress party fears a backlash from the “aam admi” or “common man”, its main voter-support base.
“The sky-high prices of onions have given the opposition a potent weapon to attack the government with,” commented the Hindustan Times newspaper recently. AFP
