Durga Devi, a middle-aged construction worker, on lean days, used to manage and prepare meals with pickles made of tomato and chillies. But now, she is clueless about feeding her family of four, including her husband, son and daughter, since the prices of those tomatoes and green chillies have skyrocketed and increased by three times in less than a month.
‘‘Serving a meal for the family even with bare minimum of food, has become difficult,” she laments.
Pouring out similar woes, another worker Ramya laments that tomato, available at ₹30 per kg till last month, had crossed the century mark. So does the price of green chillies, which is now hovering around ₹120 per kg as against the price of ₹50 per kg from a few months back. ‘‘How can we make ends meet in this condition?” she asks.
The prices of almost all the vegetables, including carrot, cabbage, and brinjal, have doubled, a housewife, Premalatha, told The Hindu on Wednesday, walking out of the new vegetable market in town. People who used to purchase vegetables in kilos are now restricting themselves to buying only half a kilo even as they pray for the prices to come down sooner than later, says vegetable vendor Srinivasa Rao
Even the price of ginger is ruling over ₹150 per kg as against ₹50 per kg from before as health-conscious people are using the spice crop in various forms to ward off lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension, adds another shopkeeper Ragava Reddy in the Bapuji market complex.
Attributing the abnormal increase in the prices of all essential commodities, including vegetables, to the entry of corporate firms in agri-marketing, All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) Prakasam district general secretary K. Rama Devi sought the Union and State governments to resume supply of all essential commodities through the public distribution system (PDS).
She added that not only lower income group people but also middle-class people feel the burning of holes in their pockets.
Big corporate firms procure farm produce in advance with market intelligence inputs and store them in cold storage units only to make big gains by releasing it when its price goes up, opines Andhra Pradesh Agricultural Workers Union district general secretary K. Anjaneyulu.
Meanwhile, the price of red gram has crossed the ₹50 per kg mark, as also the edible oil, including palm oil and groundnut oil. Each small family finds it hard to make ends meet. A family needs an additional ₹6,000 per month to cope with the price rise, he explains.
