Onion Prices and Battle of State of Being
Onion Prices and Battle of State
of Being
Shashank Vikram
Pratap Singh
Ph.D. Scholar
Department of
Commerce
Delhi School of Economics.
The phrase state
of being is highly influential and insightful in happiness literature. The
understanding of doing, having, becoming and being, describes & resolve the
enigma of deeply entrenched and ambiguous notion of happiness of people. It
squeezes the long-lasting intellectual battles across disciplines over nature
of happiness as; feeling or emotion or pleasure or collection of pleasures or satisfaction
or satisfaction, pleasure and happiness are identical or state of consciousness
or used for the expression of; feeling, mood, behavior, attitude, and life. Happiness is nothing but state of being- happy, comfortable, healthy and as many states of
consciousness as possible. It is hugely affected with surroundings of people. Thus,
state of being is the outcome of complex interplay of social, political,
economic, religious, ideological, and other forces that are around the human
being. One such force which is disturbing a lot now a days is the price of one
of the most basic and key kitchen staple-Onion.
Its prices shot up to Rs.70-80 per kg in retail market from Rs.12-15 six months
back. The wholesale price has climbed to Rs.40-50 per kg. It's such a commodity
which is consumed by the people of all the socio-economic section of society,
be it below poverty line or extremely above poverty line. Skyrocketing its
price is going to dent the state of being of people specially the poor.
India is predominately known for its agriculture
having world's largest arable land (156.46 million hectare). India is leading
producers of many commodities including onion in the world. Third in the
production of cereals; second in groundnut, fruits, vegetables, sugarcane, tea,
onion and first in jute. In 2016 India had the largest herds of buffalo and
ranked second in cattle; third in sheep; second in goat and six in chicken
population. It is the largest producer
of milk; third in production of eggs and six in production of meat.
Despite being decorated as the second largest onion
producer in the world, we are witnessing the astonishing rise in its price by
76 percent in last one month. The reduction in arrival of onions in
agricultural mandis across country because of floods in major supplying states
like, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madya Pradesh is major concern. Is it really a
concern (bad event) or good event? For that we need to look it with the prism
of specific stakeholders. As far as its suppliers are concern i.e. farmers, it’s
really in their favor and favorable for their positive state of being. Its
quite evident as well. Lasalgaon mandi, Asia's largest onion selling wholesale
market data reveal that total onion arrivals in this mandi jumped to 2,545
tonnes from about 1500 tonnes a month earlier. It means farmers ramped up
supply to take advantage of current price rise. As far as consumers are concern
it’s definitely a bad event. Hence, it has now become the game of good vs bad.
It’s interesting to see how third stakeholder i.e. the GOI (Government of
India) strategize its game in this triangular contest having different and
directly inverse sets of objectives. Any attempt to reduce price is not good
for farmers positive state of being and good for consumer and government itself,
as election in two major states is knocking the door. If GOI does so, then
intellectuals would raise question on it for prioritizing election over farmer’s
welfare and good state of being. But I personally believe that it should not be
seen with such a narrow prism and in the isolation of philosophy of decision
making.
No decision is perfect and the best in absolute term. It’s
always and always contextual and relative in nature, that too with limited set
of alternatives. Out of the given alternatives the selected decision is assumed
to be the best, not among all. This is what economic science Nobel laureate; Herbart
Simon coined the term bounded rationality. Now the question is how do we take
the decision of good, better and the best? The philosophy of decision-making advocates
for Maximum Benefits and Minimum Cost.
This is exactly what GOI has done, by taking decisions likes, levy minimum
export price (MEP) at $850 a tonne, duty free import, release of buffer stock
and prevent hoarding by imposing limits of 100 quintals and 500 quintals on
retail & wholesaler traders respectively. All these measures directly
create downward pressure on price (which is against the interest of farmers)
and further yield benefits and enhance positive state of being of maximum
number of people. Hence, consumers & GOI appears to be the winner of this
triangular contest and GOI tried its best to prevent the negative or bad state
of being of maximum number of people.
This is well articulated, suggestive of good old Benthamism. Much enjoyed!!
ReplyDeleteI'd be more interested in learning how the losses incurred by uninsured farmers (generally poorest) in flood affected areas could be covered. Also, the onion-tears seems to me a recurring issue post monsoon every year.
That's nice idea ...interesting to explore. Thank you for suggestion.
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