CRISIS OF PRICES

For the past few months, Sreelekha Nambiar, a 38-year-old homemaker in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, has been wondering if seasonal shortages are driving up the prices of vegetables and groceries. The Rs 25,000 she sets aside for monthly household expenses has been getting her two-thirds of what she could buy a year ago. Vegetable prices are ruling at Rs 100-120 a kg in April compared to Rs 80-100 a year ago; cooking gas has become costlier by Rs 150, touching Rs 950 for a cylinder; and edible oil prices have jumped to Rs 200-220 a litre from Rs 80-100 a year ago. The Rs 22 a litre rise in petrol prices has made costlier her husband Satheesh’s daily commute to the internet services firm where he works as a technician. There is also an EMI for their 1BHK flat, plus school fees for their daughter. “It’s getting tougher to make ends meet,” Nambiar says, with their income of around Rs 60,000 a month.

Nambiar’s plight will sound familiar to millions of middle- and low-income households across the country, as the prices of all items of daily life—from food to fast-moving consumer goods, garments to shoes and cosmetics, cooking gas to petrol and diesel—have shot up. What hasn’t are incomes or job opportunities, making an already fraught existence even more perilous. The Covid-19 pandemic had robbed humanity of two productive years; Putin’s ill-conceived war on Ukraine that began on February 24 will ensure that the misery lasts even longer.

The international oil economy was the first to heat up. In India, fuel price hikes were kept at bay till the result of the assembly elections