What goes up doesn’t come down
Price rise has been the talk of recurring seasons but this being the peak of pocket woes, one wonders what really needs to be done. For starters, the aaloo pyaaz anaaj basket is empty not just for the lowest strata but also for a huge chunk of the working middle class. Matar, for example, is in season but is selling for Rs 100 a kg — touching the rate of the foreign apples.
One would then say, quit having matar. Done, but what about the rest of the veggies? Aaloo for Rs 32 kg; tomatoes for Rs 30 a kg and mounting; our Chief Minister has also felt the pinch shifting away from fairprice pulses at Mother Dairies to a more convenient atta packets.
Think what this unmitigated price hike has done to the people. My maid, for example, used to take the bus to and from home. Of course she has had her monthly salary hiked but is still walking instead of bussing at least one way.
This is not just a solo case. Hoards of people from the lower strata have been getting up two to three hours earlier and walking to work. Exhaustion even before reaching the workplace is the most obvious fallout of this. Worse still, the budget is being managed by taking more leaves than usual. As my cook told me: “Not coming to work one day saves me at least Rs 50. How else to manage?”
Much as you would fume and fret at this attitude, you soon realise there is nothing refutable in her argument. After all, she and so many like her who voted for the Sheila Government for the third consecutive time, have been eating badly to somehow shrink their food bills. Now the need to shrink food bills is not something that is felt among only domestics. The great Delhi middle class is also reeling, and reeling like never before.
There is nothing that is affordable — be it the veggies, grains, cereals, fruits or dairy products. In fact, such has been the spiral that non-vegetarians have been advising the vegans to adopt the chicken-mutton diet. I don’t really know the price in the non-veg section but they insist that one kg of meat will last longer, feed more people and cost less than say a two-subzi-dal-roti-chawal-dahi meal.
It may still be okay to sell gold for more than 17k because it is a dispensable item but if your monthly food bill touches that much and more with cuts, then one wonders if this is the time really to go for a revolution. The talk of revolution because the great Indian democracy never had a weaker Opposition in Parliament.
The BJP, which generally leads the conglomeration of parties on the Opposition benches, is so engrossed in existential problems that it neither has the energy nor the strategy to unsettle if not unseat the Government over such excruciating price rise. Come to think of it, this would have been the biggest and most lucrative opportunity for the Opposition to have made some political currency for itself. But with no clear leader, ambition or future in sight, these parties are wandering in blunderland as a powerful and scarily unopposed Congress party is romping in power for self and apathy for its voters with no roadblock in sight.
In an age when comparisons and similes’ are often drawn to package news and hit the targets with maximum impact, you could say price rise is like the twister that got everyone so badly that there was never anyone left to protest or douse its killer trail. Just the other day, an innovative and thinking scribe on a news channel compared Tendulkar’s run climb being higher than Earth’s highest point — the peak of Mt Everest. He said with glee that while Mt Everest was only around 28,000 feet, Sachin’s run were 2,000 feet higher and still climbing.
Well, if you were to take the mount of prices in the last decade, you could say it has been steeper than Mt Everest. And the alarming thing about this spiral is that there seems to be no coming down from where it has perched itself.
One would then say, quit having matar. Done, but what about the rest of the veggies? Aaloo for Rs 32 kg; tomatoes for Rs 30 a kg and mounting; our Chief Minister has also felt the pinch shifting away from fairprice pulses at Mother Dairies to a more convenient atta packets.
Think what this unmitigated price hike has done to the people. My maid, for example, used to take the bus to and from home. Of course she has had her monthly salary hiked but is still walking instead of bussing at least one way.
This is not just a solo case. Hoards of people from the lower strata have been getting up two to three hours earlier and walking to work. Exhaustion even before reaching the workplace is the most obvious fallout of this. Worse still, the budget is being managed by taking more leaves than usual. As my cook told me: “Not coming to work one day saves me at least Rs 50. How else to manage?”
Much as you would fume and fret at this attitude, you soon realise there is nothing refutable in her argument. After all, she and so many like her who voted for the Sheila Government for the third consecutive time, have been eating badly to somehow shrink their food bills. Now the need to shrink food bills is not something that is felt among only domestics. The great Delhi middle class is also reeling, and reeling like never before.
There is nothing that is affordable — be it the veggies, grains, cereals, fruits or dairy products. In fact, such has been the spiral that non-vegetarians have been advising the vegans to adopt the chicken-mutton diet. I don’t really know the price in the non-veg section but they insist that one kg of meat will last longer, feed more people and cost less than say a two-subzi-dal-roti-chawal-dahi meal.
It may still be okay to sell gold for more than 17k because it is a dispensable item but if your monthly food bill touches that much and more with cuts, then one wonders if this is the time really to go for a revolution. The talk of revolution because the great Indian democracy never had a weaker Opposition in Parliament.
The BJP, which generally leads the conglomeration of parties on the Opposition benches, is so engrossed in existential problems that it neither has the energy nor the strategy to unsettle if not unseat the Government over such excruciating price rise. Come to think of it, this would have been the biggest and most lucrative opportunity for the Opposition to have made some political currency for itself. But with no clear leader, ambition or future in sight, these parties are wandering in blunderland as a powerful and scarily unopposed Congress party is romping in power for self and apathy for its voters with no roadblock in sight.
In an age when comparisons and similes’ are often drawn to package news and hit the targets with maximum impact, you could say price rise is like the twister that got everyone so badly that there was never anyone left to protest or douse its killer trail. Just the other day, an innovative and thinking scribe on a news channel compared Tendulkar’s run climb being higher than Earth’s highest point — the peak of Mt Everest. He said with glee that while Mt Everest was only around 28,000 feet, Sachin’s run were 2,000 feet higher and still climbing.
Well, if you were to take the mount of prices in the last decade, you could say it has been steeper than Mt Everest. And the alarming thing about this spiral is that there seems to be no coming down from where it has perched itself.
Published November 22, 2009, Sunday Pioneer http://www.dailypioneer.com/217362/What-goes-up-doesn%E2%80%99t-come-down.html
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