Among a host of issues that are currently doing rounds upon which media glare has fallen persistently, onion price rise seems to be a bit lightweight in the crowd and had been pushed to the back benches. But that doesn’t dilute gravity of the situation and it’s now more than a month and a half the torment has been running unabated making eyes of the common people more and more teary each day. The daily essential now hovers around Rs 90-100 per kg making it a very costly item for most countrymen and it appears that it has got no panacea, just like the current economic woes. Interestingly, it will be relevant to observe that onion, even if an essential aspect of Indian culinary is also somehow considered as a bad omen so far as political fortunes are concerned. After all, it will be difficult to forget how this tiny palm-sized vegetable played decisive part in downfall of so many seemingly invincible heavyweights and equally impregnable political fortresses. In current case, approaching time will reveal all that is in store in what quantity and for whom. Meanwhile, there seems very little respite from the exponential price rise and it’s still uncertain how long pockets will continue to burn. 

In most cities onion price had already touched century mark, in major cities it’s as much as Rs 120 plus and has brought along with it some rather unthinkable incidents like stealing. Even though apparently witty and much to the laughter of anyone, it’s an ample indicator of the depth of crisis. But the current edition is not maiden and its repetition only exposes the fact that the country is yet to have a comprehensible mechanism to tackle a situation of this sort and no lessons had been learnt from past experiences either. As an ad hoc measure ban on exports on all varieties of onion had been imposed since September 30 last and after two months, escalating prices only show that there are further problems which are more fundamental. It’s an open secret that an average Indian farmer manages to pocket only Rs 2 or 3 or a little more if lucky by selling onions and the same is purchased by households at exorbitant rates. But it’s sure that something surely happens ‘in-between’ and the entire gamut of causes can’t be attributed to the whims and fancies of nature alone.

The despairing thing is that there had always been a lack of will, political or otherwise, to delve deep into those ‘in-between happenings’, in past and same in present case. It’s high time the think tanks and their political bosses engage themselves in devising a permanent mechanism to face the lingering onion enigma.