After a long sabbatical, and just in time as more people are getting aware of the rising prices of vegetables, rising unemployment, rising numbers of Covid-19 cases and a decline in GDP, Uttar Pradesh may once again find itself leading a people’s struggle of survival. That is if all the efforts now being undertaken by Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav bear fruit, and if he succeeds in unifying the states’s opposition including the Congress to present a united force, against what they have already called the Adityanath government’s anti-people, anti-poor policies.  

Akhilesh Yadav has been very active in raising issues and protesting against price hike, even as the party’s Rajya Sabha member Javed Ali Khan has been raising issues in Parliament. Party workers are out on the streets protesting, and have been met with lathi charges by UP police for doing so. Yadav has also been very active on social media, to bring all these issues to the attention of the media, and youth voters, who the party is likely to focus on in the next elections. Yadav, a seasoned politician by now, has always been seen as an educated leader with a growing following from the state’s youth.

He is now articulating  the everyday concerns of the people including rising food prices, “Due to the prices of vegetables touching the sky, both the bag and the plate of the general public have been killed. He recently posted, “failure of the ‘Operation Greens’ scheme is clearly visible. The unbridled prices have exposed the cheap understanding of those who explain the economical jumla…Inflation has pierced the plate of ‘Thalinomics’.” 

आसमान छूते सब्ज़ियों के दामों से आम जनता की थैली और थाली दोनों पर मार पड़ी है. ‘ऑपरेशन ग्रीन्स’ योजना की नाकामी साफ़ दिख रही है. बेलगाम दामों ने सस्ती थाली का अर्थशास्त्रीय-जुमला समझाने वालों की थोथी समझ की पोल खोल दी है.

महंगाई ने ‘थालीनॉमिक्स’ की थाली में ही छेद कर दिया है.

— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) September 15, 2020

He has also been actively fuelling hashtags like #NoMoreBJP, the strongest was his anger of police brutality on his party workers who were lathicharged by UP police,  while they were  protesting against the national unemployment crisis. Yadav stated, “The government did not do well by raising sticks on the youths seeking employment in a peaceful manner. Such behavior towards the youth depressed due to unemployment shows the insensitivity of the government. Damn blasphemous!”

आज सपा द्वारा उप्र के ज़िलों में ज्ञापन देकर शांतिपूर्ण तरीक़े से रोज़गार की माँग करनेवाले युवाओं पर सरकार ने लाठी उठाकर अच्छा नहीं किया. बेरोज़गारी के कारण निराश युवा के साथ ऐसा व्यवहार सरकार की असंवेदनशीलता दर्शाता है.

घोर निंदनीय! #NoMoreBJP pic.twitter.com/LyR4Xl7GSx

— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) September 14, 2020

The protest marches, and gatherings of Samajwadi Party workers, had been lathicharged by police in several districts. The protesters were raising awareness on unemployment, and other critical issues plaguing the  state. According to a report in the Indian Express the Samajwadi Party has been carrying out active campaigns, taking to the streets, against the Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments in UP, as well at the Centre. The protesters were lathicharged by UP police in several districts, and the SP leadership has made sure those images and videos were shared widely on social media.

Party leaders have told the media that they will continue their protests across the state which are  focused on: unemployment, and law and order, as well as the “‘misuse of state apparatus” for “harassment of people”, and corruption. Many cases of such harassment, and violence, in Uttar Pradesh have been recorded in the past few months. The Congress’ leadership too had upped its ante and protested against this, however the SP is now doing so in a more aggressive manner.

According to the IE report, on September 10, UP government had initiated an investigation into the alleged corruption in purchase of oximeters and infrared thermometers in several districts. Chief Minister Adityanath constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged scam, it was then that opposition parties began their protests, and called for action against those responsible.

Samajwadi Party leaders have begun uniting the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, as ‘unlocks’ are now being activated and taken to the streets to protest the “government’s failures”. A party leader told IE that they “will leave no stone unturned” to highlight the issues being faced by the people of the state, especially the youth.

The youth will also be made aware of the status of UP governments “failures” by the SP’s online campaigns. Social media is now being used by official party handles, and amplified by workers to raise their voice of protest and dissent against price rise, condition of farmers in the state, privatisation in jobs, contractual jobs, corruption, law and order. Most recently, hashtags such #nahichahiyesamvida (we don’t want contracts),  trended in protest against the government considering to bring in a proposal to keep state government employees of group B and C on a contract basis for five years reported the IE. 

The leadership is working to make #NoMoreBJP a national hashtag. The SP has also announced that onon September 21, it will hold protests across Uttar Pradesh state against “the failure of the state government on all fronts’ ‘, said media reports. The workers will  submit memorandums addressed to the Governor on district and tehsil levels.

रोज़गार हमारा अधिकार है इसीलिए #NoMoreBJP और हम मना रहे हैं #बेरोजगार_सप्ताह

— Juhie Singh (@juhiesingh) September 14, 2020

Jo job no vote #बेरोजगार_सप्ताह @narendramodi @ndtv pic.twitter.com/c29qJmsWLe

— GAURv Kumar (@kumar_gaurav001) September 14, 2020

Meanwhile, in Parliament, Javed Ali Khan of the Samajwadi Party said that the UP Government was collecting charges for “unloading, cleaning wheat,” The Samajwadi Party MP raised the issue through a Zero Hour mention. Khan informed Parliament that while the government has fixed a minimum support price of Rs 1925 per quintal for wheat but farmers are being paid only Rs 1905. As reported by NDTV, this amounts to allegations that “the Uttar Pradesh government charging Rs 20 per quintal in cash in the name of unloading and cleaning charges for wheat procured from farmers and has not reimbursed them in the last three years.”

pic.twitter.com/pxb9StYJIk

— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) September 16, 2020

Khan narrated his own experience of selling wheat at a government-mandated procurement centre, and claimed that he was “asked to pay Rs 20 per quintal in cash as cleaning and unloading charges”. The news report quotes him telling Parliament that, “When I demanded so see the order to this effect, the official at the procurement mandi showed me an Uttar Pradesh government order mandating Rs 20 per quintal as a charge for unloading and cleaning”. While the order stated that this charge would be reimbursed to farmers once cleared by the Centre and approved by the chief minister, Khan alleged that farmers have not received any reimbursement in the last three years. “They don’t take cheque or do an (RTGS) account transfer. They take cash and do not give a receipt,” he alleged. He said 36 lakh tonnes of wheat was procured in Uttar Pradesh this year and Rs 72 crore has been collected from farmers as this charge. Rajya Sabha chairman M Venkaiah Naidu asked the government to take note of the issue.

It will be interesting to see how Adityanath in UP, and the BJP’s central leadership will respond to these charges now that there is no impending ‘bhoomi pujan’ to focus on.

Related:

1 crore unemployed labourers in India: Ministry of Labour and Employment

No warrant, no due process: UP’s ‘Special Force’ to bend all rules!

UP just got its first detention camp

Men lynched by mobs, cab driver killed by passengers in UP

The post Inflation has pierced the plate of ‘Thalinomics’: Akhilesh Yadav appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The unemployment rate is currently estimated to be at a 45-year high, reaching 7.8% in urban areas and 5.3% in rural ones, according to a leaked National Sample Survey Office report for 2017-18.

This may go some way to explain why the proportion of people “happy with the way things are going” in the country has also fallen by 15 percentage points since the previous year (from 70% in 2017 to 55% in 2018).

This marks a return to 2015 satisfaction levels–after the first full year of Narendra Modi’s government–but levels are still significantly higher than in the last two years of Manmohan Singh’s government, the report based on a survey of 2,591 people said.

Corrupt officials, terrorism and crime are the next major problems identified, with over 60% of people saying they are a ‘very big problem’. The findings mark no change from last year when employment opportunities also topped the list as the biggest problem facing the country.

Little progress, deteriorating situation

On key issues such as employment, corruption and inflation, the majority of the respondents said there had been little improvement over the past five years, the period encompassing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance’s term, the survey found.

Jobs: No more than 21% of respondents said the employment situation had improved over the past five years, while 67% said it had deteriorated. With India’s shrinking employment opportunities viewed as a key concern for three quarters of the population, 64% of respondents said emigration in search of jobs was also another major problem affecting the country.

Corruption: Attitudes towards stemming corruption were similar, with 65% saying the situation had become worse and 21% saying it had improved. The rising prices of goods and services were another major concern, as 65% said inflation had exacerbated since five years ago.

Inequality: On the wealth gap, communal relations and air pollution, at least a quarter of those surveyed said the situation had improved. Proportionally, more people said there had been improvement on these issues than on jobs, inflation and corruption. Nevertheless, the majority said things had gotten worse.

Just over half (54%) said the gap between the rich and the poor in India had widened over the past five years, and 27% said it had narrowed.

The wealth held by the richest 1% of Indians reportedly saw a 15-percentage-point rise in just over a year, from 58% in 2018 to 73% 2019, according to a 2019 Oxfam report on inequality, as IndiaSpend reported on January 24, 2019.

Air pollution: Nearly 51% of respondents said air quality had declined since 2014, while 27% said air pollution had improved.

As many as 15 out of the top 20 most polluted cities are now found in India, as IndiaSpend reported March 5, 2019.

Communalism: Just under half (45%) of the respondents said they believed communal relations had worsened since 2014, while 28% said the situation had improved.

The number of communal riots increased by 24% from 703 in 2015 to 869 in 2016, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). With the annual Crime in India reports for 2017 and 2018 yet to be released, trends for the last two years are unclear.

Partisanship: There is a “decidedly partisan take on the direction of the country and the challenges facing India”, with significantly differing views found on either side of the political spectrum, the report said.

For instance, supporters of the opposition Indian National Congress (Congress) party are 21 percentage points more likely to believe job opportunities have worsened over the past five years, than those backing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Partisan attitudes are similarly found on issues regarding wealth inequality, corruption, terrorism and communal relations. BJP supporters are 17 percentage points less likely to think inequality has become further entrenched, and 12 percentage points less likely to say that corruption has become worse under the Modi government, the report said.

How well is India’s democracy performing?
Amid concerns over India’s economic health, security and air quality, there was mixed response towards India’s democratic performance.
“Indians voice strong frustrations about elections and elected officials”, the report said, with up to 64% of respondents saying they believed most politicians are corrupt and 58% saying they believed nothing changes much after elections.  

No more than 33% said they believed elected officials actually care what ordinary people think. A further 54% said they believed most people live in areas where it is too dangerous to walk around at night, indicating concerns around safety and the rule of law among more than half the population.

These attitudes may explain why no more than 54% said they were ‘very satisfied’ with democracy, down from 79% a year ago–a decline of 25 percentage points.

Nevertheless, 58% said free speech is protected and 59% said they believe most people have “a good chance” to improve their standard of living.

Just under half, however, said they believed the court system treats everyone fairly (47%), with a sizeable proportion (37%), saying they did not believe that is not the case.

Foreign affairs and global perceptions of Modi’s leadership
More than 75% of respondents viewed Pakistan as a serious threat, and only 7% said Pakistan is no danger to national security.

However, since the survey was conducted nine months before the Pulwama terror attack in Kashmir that killed more than 40 CRPF officers, these figures do not account for any change in perceptions following the attack and India’s subsequent military response, the report noted.

Even ahead of the Pulwama attack, 53% of respondents said the situation in Kashmir had deteriorated over the last five years, with just 18% believing it had improved. Further, 58% of respondents said the government should step up its military action against Pakistan.

Partisan attitudes are evident on this issue, too, with those expressing “confidence in Narendra Modi” 70% more likely to see Pakistan as a threat than those with less confidence in the Prime Minister, the report said. Among those with less favourable attitudes to Modi, a slim majority (51%) viewed Pakistan as a threat.

International perceptions of India throughout Prime Minister Modi’s term in office have remained largely stable, the report added. Several countries including Australia, South Korea and Japan recorded improved attitudes towards India between 2014 and 2018, the highest being a 13-percentage-point rise in the Philippines. The US and Japan both posted a “negligible” five-percentage-point decline.

There is some mismatch in how Indians view their country’s position on the world stage, and how India is received by a wider audience. While 56% of Indian respondents said their country is now playing a greater role in global affairs, an average of no more than 28% of people among 26 surveyed countries agreed.

However, sizeable groups in several wealthy countries said India’s role was growing, namely France (49%), Japan (48%), South Korea (48%), Sweden (47%) and the UK (46%).

Most people across the countries surveyed (34%) said India’s role had stayed the same for the past decade. In this category are Brazil and South Africa, two fellow BRICS nations, where larger groups (32% and 37%, respectively) saw India as having a less important role in the world today compared to 10 years ago.

(Sanghera is a writer and researcher with IndiaSpend.)

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend

The post ‘Jobs And Rising Prices Are India’s Biggest Problems’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Interview with Prof. Prabhat Patnaik
Interviewed by Prabir Purkayastha

In this interview, Newsclick Editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha talks to eminent economist Prabhat Patnaik about the drastic fall in the rupee and its implications on the Indian economy. They speak about how inflation is causing low growth rate in the economy, a problem that the government doesn’t quite seem to know how to tackle.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post Dangerous Fall in the Rupee: What does it Mean for India? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

The post Indian Workers on Starvation Wage appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 

The post Hike in Fuel Prices: Petrol Prices Set to Reach All-Time High appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, was not worried. When asked about prices in late September he told media that it is “normal for vegetable prices to rise during monsoon”. The rainy season is gone but prices are refusing to back down.

Prices of many common vegetables like onions, tomatoes, brinjal or eggplant, cabbage, cauliflower, various greens, beans, etc., have increased by anything between 50% to 100% since January this year, according to retail prices data collected by the govt.’s Labour Bureau. In some cases the price spike is incredible and cannot be explained by some snags in the supply chain. For instance, tomato prices have shot up by a jaw dropping 157%, cauliflower by 108%, onion by 94%, peas by 218% and leafy vegetables by over 60% in the past 9 months.

In general, the Labour Bureau’s index for fruits and vegetables has increased by over 37% in this period driving up food inflation. For poorer people – that means for most Indians – this is a major blow to family budgets already under pressure from steadily rising prices all round. With joblessness continuing to grow as recent data has revealed economic distress under the double strike of job insecurity and runaway food inflation is becoming unbearable.

Usually, the govt. of the day explains away price spikes in single commodities, especially vegetables, as resulting from unseasonal rains or storms, or dip in production in some regions. But an across the board price spike of the kind being witnessed in recent weeks is unprecedented and highly damaging.
Vegetable inflation has led to increasing prices of some other commodities like eggs, as consumers shift to equivalent food items. For instance, eggs are now selling at about Rs.7 each, up 40% in the past two months, making them as costly as dressed chicken itself.

One of the biggest failures of the Modi govt. has been on the price front. Since June 2014, several essential commodities have seen a steady rise: meat is up by about 20%, milk (17%), onions (47%), radish (37%), carrots (45%), greens (32%), tomatoes (88%), brinjal (43%), cauliflower (37%), peas (69%), beans (24%), according to . This is apart from periodic price spikes in specific commodities like onions, pulses or eggs, that arise from a combination of temporary supply side constraint being used and magnified by unscrupulous traders and hoarders who often function as cartels.

The Modi govt. has floundered around in dealing with this and, as the case of pulses shows, not been very successful in preventing steady or spiky rises. Despite a bumper crop of pulses in 2016-17, prices continue to be high in absolute terms, which is what matters to most Indians.

Recently, several trade unions have called for a country-wide protest day against price rise on Dec 13, 2017. This comes in the backdrop of a historic protest by workers – the 3-day Mahapadav – at Delhi to press for better wages and control of unbridled price rise, among other issues.

Courtesy: Newsclick.

The post Veggie Prices Zoom As Govt. Refuses To Act appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Price tags are seen on the bags of pulses that are kept on display for sale outside a shop at a market in Mumbai, India January 31, 2017.

 
In many state-regulated agricultural markets of major tur-producing states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka, prices have fallen to Rs 4,000 per quintal in some markets, 20% below the minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 5,050 per quintal (including a bonus of Rs 425) since December 2016.
 
A ban on exports, restrictions on stocking by private agencies in a bumper-crop year and absence of futures trading in agricultural commodities have been cited as key reasons for pulses to follow “the usual roller-coaster of high and low prices” in consecutive years, according to this article by Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair professor for agriculture at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, on March 15, 2017, in The Indian Express.
 
Markets proved us wrong, and here’s why
 
After two consecutive drought years, a good monsoon prevailed in most parts of India in 2016, barring some districts of Punjab, Haryana, Kerala and Gujarat, among the major states.
 
The situation turned after a good monsoon, even as IndiaSpend reported in October 2015 that a perfect storm around tur dal–monsoon failures, insufficient MSP, poor yield per hectare of dal and growing public preference to opt for eggs and meat for proteins–would keep its price high for a long time.
 
Monsoon in 2016 turned out to be above normal in Maharashtra, productivity increased from about 360 kg/ha to 760 kg/ha and farmers planted dal on record area ever, since the previous year, 2015, fetched them record prices at above Rs 100/kg.
 

Source: Retail Prices Management System, Department of Agriculture
 
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Gujarat are the major tur-producing states. Rural district markets connect with farmers directly and consumers indirectly, since they involve intermediaries. At large consumer markets in cities, such as Mumbai and Ahmedabad, pulses from district markets are sold to retailers and consumers.
 
Tur arrival at district markets can, thus, track the price farmers get.
 
The wholesale price in major district markets–Amravati, Gulbarga, Vadodara and Narsinghpur–in the four major tur-producing states surged in 2015 and saw an almost equal or worse decline in 2016.
 

Source: AgMarkNet; Prices in Rs per quintal
 
Why have prices bottomed out? Answer: No exports allowed, no futures trading
 
Supply fell in 2015, reducing dal in the market, compared to 2014. Traders paid farmers more than Rs 100/kg for tur—a record—and middlemen and retailers increased the price to Rs 180/kg in grocery shops.
 
In 2016, the sowing area of tur in Maharashtra increased 25% to 1.53
million hectare but production is estimated to have increased 160%, from 444,000 tonne in 2015-16 to 1.17 million tonne in 2016-17.
 

Source: Agriculture Department, Government of Maharashtra
 
A sowing area of 1.54 million hectare produced 1.17 million tonne of tur in Maharashtra–25% of India’s production of 4.2 million tonne–but productivity, or produce per unit area, fell 18% short of the best it had achieved in 2007-08.
 
So, in 2016-17, the market is awash in dal, and traders are buying it from farmers at prices below the MSP.
 
To reduce the impact of the supply glut on farmers, the central government increased the buffer stock–produce that government buys directly from the farmer as a safety measure for farmers as well as market availability–for pulses ten-fold, from 0.2 million tonne to two million tonne.
 
Numbers don’t reveal what’s happening to farmers
 
Although the buffer stock has been increased, government agencies are not ready to stockpile pulses because storage space is limited, as is evident in Parbhani district, Maharashtra.
 
“Farmers with tur have been waiting at the district procurement centre of Food Corporation of India for more than a week as the centre is running out of space,” a regional agricultural officer, who did not wish to be named, told IndiaSpend.
 
“They will get a better price (MSP) at the centre, but the tractor with tur costs them around Rs 800/day, which is effectively reducing the price from MSP to the market price of around Rs 4,000 per quintal,” he said.
 
In Karnataka, the southwest monsoon (June-September) was 20% deficient in the south-interior subdivision while the northeast monsoon (October-December) was 70% deficient statewide.  Reservoirs in the state are 37% lower than normal in a state that is facing its worst drought in four decades.
 
Karnataka’s water shortage has imperilled the summer and winter (kharif and rabi) crops. The state government has responded with a special state bonus of Rs 450 per quintal, taking the procurement price of tur to Rs 5,500 per quintal, the highest ever by any state.
 
Government buyouts of pulses alone will not save the farmer
 
Not just government support, but having a sound marketing policy is equally important, Gulati argued in his article, a view he expressed in August 2016 as well in The Indian Express.
 
“Farmers should take planting decisions based on likely future prices and not last year’s market prices,” his March 2017 column said.
 
If farmers knew from futures prices that they would be paid below the MSP this season, they could have opted for cotton, which saw a reduction in area sown.
 
Pulses exports were banned in 2006, when record exports of 0.5 million tonne in 2005 aggravated domestic shortfalls. The ban has not been lifted, with some exceptions. Exports are about 1% of total domestic production, according to government data.
 
The pulses shortage in 2015-16 saw imports rise to 5.8 million tonne, or a third of the production. In the oversupply year of 2016-17, exports remained banned.
 
Even when Indian farmers are getting less than Rs 4,000 per quintal in domestic markets, pulses are still being imported at a price above Rs 10,000 per quintal, Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the Congress parliamentary party said in Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), the Business Standard reported on March 21, 2017.
 
A government committee headed by chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian recommended in September 2016 that the MSP for tur should be increased to Rs 6,000 per quintal in 2017 and Rs 7,000 per quintal in 2018.
 
(Waghmare is a Mumbai based researcher and a contributor to IndiaSpend)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

The post Drop In Pulses Prices Reveals Flaws In India’s Agriculture Policy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

एक फरवरी से लागू होने वाली नई दरों के बाद 14.2 किग्रा भार का घरेलू सिलेंडर 67 रुपये की बढ़ोतरी के बाद 624 की जगह 691 रुपये में मिलेगा।

इससे सब्सिडी कोटा पाने वाले उपभोक्ताओं के लिंकअप खाते में वृद्धि बाद जमा होने वाली सब्सिडी राशि भी 187.29 से बढ़कर 254.20 रुपये हो जाएगी।

वहीं, 19 किग्रा का व्यावसायिक सिलेंडर 140 रुपये की वृद्धि के साथ 1190 की जगह अब 1330 रुपये में मिलेगा।

इसी तरह पांच किलो के छोटे नॉन सब्सिडी सिलेंडर की कीमत में 23.50 रुपये की वृद्धि होने से अब यह सिलेंडर 252 रुपये में मिलेगा।

Courtesy: Amar Ujala

The post महंगाई का झटका: 67 रुपये बढ़ी घरेलू गैस सिलेंडर की कीमत appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Based on what is called Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) survey of 1,47,938 participants in the age-group 35–70, the study also encompasses four lower- middle income countries (LMICs; China, Colombia, Iran, Occupied Palestinian Territory), seven upper-middle income countries (UMICs; Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Poland, Turkey, South Africa), and three high income countries (HICs; Canada, Sweden, United Arab Emirates).

Carried out between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2013, and titled “Availability, affordability, and consumption of fruits and vegetables in 18 countries across income levels: findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study”, in all 29,421 participated in the survey in LIC, a great majority of whom were Indians, 25,448, followed by 2,185 from Bangladesh, 1,713 from Pakistan and just 75 from Zimbabwe.

Carried out on the basis of household income data, and authored by 36 health experts, seven of them from India, the study says, “The cost of one serving of vegetables relative to income per household member was more than 19 times higher in LICs than in HICs, and the relative cost of one serving of fruit was 50 times higher in LICs than in HICs.”

“The proportion of individuals who could not afford the recommended daily intake was highest in LICs (57·42%), compared with 25·42% in UMICs, 17·68% in LMICs, and 0·25% in HICs”, the study says, adding, “In all regions, unaffordability was higher in rural areas than in urban areas.”
 

 

The post To 57% Indians fruits and vegetable are “unaffordable”, same is true of other lower income countries: Lancet appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A spate of tweets by Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI-M on spiralling and unprecedented high, food inflation in 2016 have created a social media storm while escaping completely the ‘attention’ of commercial media channels. Private television channels run by large corporations have shown little heed to how much vegetables, cooking oil, pulses, potatoes, and sugar cost now compared to what they did a few years ago.

A table attached (see image below) shows that vegetable inflation rate this year is at a staggering 14.74 per cent (rural and urban) with rural being at 12.72 per cent and urban at 18.40 per cent respectively. Pulses and potatoes are even more shocking at 26.86 per cent with the rural count be at 24.28 per cent and urban at 24.51 per cent respectively. Sugar and confectionary is up by 16.79 per cent: rural 12.98 per cent and urban at 24.72 per cent.
 

Yechury’s tweets said:
 
JumlanomicsEffect Food inflation in June at 7.79%. Pulses dearer by 26.86%, Vegetables rise 14.74%. #AchheDin
 
 
The curious case is that of media attention and priorities, however. Whereas under the earlier UPA I and II governments the smallest rise in prices figured and hogged hours of media time –as they should—now, under the Modi Regime, it seems that Toor Dal selling at Rs 175-180 per kilogram and vegetables over Rs 100 per kilo are of marginal interest to English television viewers.
 
Yechury also tweets figures of the declining and deadened industrial growth in past months:
 
Whither Industrial 'growth'? IIP from April-May 2016 has shrunk by -0.1%. #NailTheSpin #Jumlanomics

The post Food Inflation and Falling Industrial Growth Fail to Make Newshour Debates appeared first on SabrangIndia.