YOUR DAAL TO GET EVEN MORE PRICEY

By Ruma Dubey

There is a big joke doing the rounds….

A man, getting super excited after Modi wins the elections suffers a stroke and goes into coma. He was too happy. He woke up just a few days ago and the wife asked him for Rs. 200 to get a kilo of Daal to celebrate his recovery. He tragically died after hearing the price of Daal under Modi Sarkar. The Doctor issued a death certificate that read... Cause of death: "High pulse rate."

Yes, the price of daal has become the butt of so many jokes but that is what a satire is all about, isn’t it?  And now we hear that the price could go up to as much as Rs.300/kg as the festive season nears.  There is simply not much stock, whatever is there is hoarded and the rest, the middle men have ensured that stock gets sold at sky high prices.

Many agriculturists have blamed the soaring price of pulses on the Green Revolution, which they say changed the entire sowing pattern with wheat taking predominance as the battle then was to fight hunger. Slowly, given the vagaries of growing pulse led to many farmers abandoning it altogether. Farmers were finding it difficult to even recover the cost of production where middle men procured stock at the time of harvesting itself, when prices were low and then it is hoarded, affecting supply and once demand soars, pulses are sold at very high prices. Thus growing of pulse did not keep pace with the growth in population, which is why we always import pulses to meet the demand.

This year has been declared as the year of Pulse and farmers have been encouraged to grow more. This seems to be working, at least that is what the data from the agriculture department shows. Currently, the kharif sowing season is on and as per the latest data of this month, there has been a significant jump in pulses area. Farmers have sown in nearly 46 lakh hectares, up by 26% from 36.44 lakh hectare in the same period a year ago.

This will take at least four months to harvest and another month to come to the markets. Till then, we will have to deal with high prices while the middle men will continue to fill their pockets. This entire mechanism of marketing is undergoing an overhaul. We currently have the APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committees) in place. Under this, farmers have no option but to sell their produce only to middlemen approved by the government in authorized Mandis (markets). Thus a supermarket cannot go to the farmer directly and buy; they both need the middlemen. Today, the middlemen have become so strong, it is difficult to bring any control there. Bihar was the first to scrap APMC altogether, Karnataka has put its APMCs online and Maharashtra has also made moves to begin the process of scrapping it. Modi wants the APMC Act to go but state Govt’s are resisting this as many kith and kin of the politicians run these APMCs.

In a landmark move, Modi has already delisted vegetables and fruits from the APMC and to fully do away with it, a pilot of e-NAM, an e-trading platform for the National Agriculture Market was launched. Under this, farmers will get the freedom to decide "when, where and at what price" they sell their produce. Under NAM, the farmer can get his produce to the registered mandi where local traders can bid and also traders can bid online from other states. It is up to the farmer – he chooses the highest price; the entire transaction is digitized and transparent, with no “commission agent” in between.

These are very good changes but it will take a while for resistance to change to break. But for now, we the people will have to continue to pay higher prices for daal and other veggies and fruits. Food inflation will only soar, at least till October. So stock up on your pulses supply at home to protect your pocket from further hurt.

PS" Guess which is the cheapest vegetable in the markets today? Onions!