By Saptadeepa Bhattacharjee
The humble bulb may just push green salads off the table and make chapatis a tad bit lonely.
The surge in onion prices is hitting the Aam Aadmi hard. And as prices continue to soar, homemakers are simply looking for alternatives as they look to cut down on its use untill prices come down, at least a bit.
While the red variety of onions are selling between ₹55 and ₹57 a kilogram at wholesale markets in Guwahati, traders are selling them around ₹70, some unscrupulous traders even charging customers as high as ₹80.
And if authorities don’t take any measure to regulate prices, they may inch closer to the century mark.
Homemakers are finding it difficult to cope up with the sudden spike in prices. “Onions are used in almost every dish. The spike has unsettled my budget so much so that I have been forced to compromise on its use. If I used a medium sized onion in a particular dish when prices were low, I am now using a very small one, or even a half, now. We are somehow managing but what about the poor?” Shanta Deka, a resident of Ganeshguri, said.
Khushboo, a domestic help, said she bought three onions for Rs 20. “I will try to make do with them for the next 5-6 meals at least,” she said.
Vendors maintained that they used to purchase 10-15 kg of onions from the mandi each day, but these days, they get just 4-5 kg of the vegetable as many homemakers had stopped buying them due to the high rates.
“We understand the price hike is burning a hole in the pockets of consumers but what do we do? We too are helpless. We are also buying at inflated rates. We too have to feed our family. There seems to be no respite from this inflation,” Badal Dutta, a vegetable seller in Colony Bazar of Kalapahar area, said.
“Every now and then, price of something or the other increases. First it was tomatoes and now it’s onions. Sometimes, like during floods and drought, it is out of anyone’s hands, but nobody cares about us. How do we survive on the meagre amount that we earn when we have to buy basic items like onions and tomatoes at inflated rates?” said an auto driver.
The surge in onion prices may contribute to inflationary pressure over the next couple of months, alongside the elevated costs of pulses and cereals. This price hike could also place an additional burden on millions of households that consume onions as a daily staple.
And with prices unlikely to come down in the coming days, onion tears, it appears, will not dry fast.
