Onions have disappeared from the pakodas (Kanda Bhajiya), green salads and all the menu items served in hotels and restaurants. But moms manning their home kitchens don’t have the luxury of this option of ignoring the use of this quintessential vegetable, necessary in almost every dish which finds its way on dinner tables in Goan homes. And given the manner in which prices have headed steeply north over several months and even topped the Rs 200 per kilo mark at times, its pinching pockets. Almost everyone’s.
But moms are almost always supermoms. And come what may, they will manage the kitchens in any such adversity. So, for a moment, let’s leave the kitchens and step into the markets where it is all happening as far as the prices of onions heading north is concerned.
Prices uncontrollable
It hasn’t helped the local markets and the fact that prices are getting uncontrollable that onions aren’t grown in Goa. No one knows why. But fact of the matter is, barring the sparce quantities of the local grown onion sold and bought at the feast fairs and a few weekly markets like on Fridays at Mapusa and Banastarim or Saturday’s at Calangute and Ponda, almost 99.9 per-cent of local consumption of onion is catered to by imports from Belagavi, Nashik and other important onion markets in the region.
As noted consumer activist Roland Martins puts it: “Onion prices are exposed to the market price variations like many other vegetables and commodity prices. There is no specific price control mechanism for it, but governments being tasked to work for the welfare of the consumer must intervene and provide relief.”
Martins said efforts to make onions available at reasonable prices can be done by government agencies acting quickly after assessing the situation. He said, it requires inter-departmental co-ordination to mobilise resources, like the Agriculture and the Civil Supplies departments in the instant case.
So did the Goa government do its job? Belatedly, and too little of it.
Little help from Horticulture
Onions sold at marginally lower prices than the open market in Sahakari Bhandar outlets began disappearing within couple of hours after these outlets opened shutters and the Goa State Horticulture Corporation headed by Mayem MLA Pravin Zantye, which sponsors self-employed youth, women and others set up vegetable outlets across Goa, woke up to its responsibility only last week. Can’t blame the Zantye-led Corporation though, for financial assistance to it for the subsidy quotient from a cash-starved State government wasn’t coming for long months and they just didn’t have the money to bring in onion stocks from Nashik and Belagavi.
It was only when Zantye personally pursued the matter with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant that a cheque pertaining to part of the subsidy backlog reached the Corporation’s account last week and it began bringing in the onion stocks for sale at a nearly 50 per-cent subsidised rate at the GSHC’s outlets run by the self-employed folks.
Uncertainty & volatility
of prices
Goa’s open market meanwhile was hit by the uncertainty and volatility of prices which posed high risk to the wholesalers. According to one wholesaler Amonkar, who operates in Panaji, import of onions reduced by 25 per cent further putting pressure on its retail price.
“The small hoteliers, street food sellers have replaced onions with cabbage. Since there is uncertainty in rates we just don’t bring onions like before and calibrate it as per demand of retailers. We now buy stock which suffices to cater to our regular customers for two days,” Amonkar said.
“The GSHC, is selling substandard onions to the people. Onion stocks which have been discarded are being brought in and supplied to Goans,” Amonkar claimed, adding that he expects the rates will stabilise only after January next year.
During Christmas there is further chance of escalation of onion prices again due to rise in demand to cater to the soaring tourist inflow during that time, Amonkar said.
Onions are imported by the private, open market wholesalers from Nasik, Pune, Kolhapur, Belagavi and even Gujarat, he adds.
Another wholesaler Kashinath Naik said onion yield was affected from May this year due to damage by unusual rains.
“The supply to big standard hotels has not reduced. We were bringing stocks frequently as there is tourist season increase in demand of onions,” Naik said, adding that Goa needs a special storage facility for onions specially for the two-three months when there is low yield and demand simultaneously increases due to the start of the tourism season.
If the State government could step in at lightning speed to cut road tax rates by half only to stabilise the automobile market at the behest of the dealers, it beats logic both political or otherwise why it couldn’t show similar alacrity in stepping in to wipe the tears of both business and the common man in Goa caused by the skyrocketing prices of the quintessential onion. Perhaps the moms of politicians and bureaucrats in the decision-making positions don’t have to cook and man their kitchens at home?
