By Ajay Prakash
15 December 2009

Rapidly rising food prices are pushing tens of millions of Indians deeper into poverty and outright hunger.


The soaring price of vegetables pushed the annual rate of inflation for food articles to over 19 percent for the week ending November 28, a marked increase from the 17.5 percent recorded the previous week and the 15.5 percent the week before that.

The most recent data shows that the price of cereals has gone up by 12.7 percent over the past year, the price of rice by 11.8 percent, wheat by 12.6 percent, fruits by 13 percent, and milk by 11.4 percent. Potatoes cost more than double what they did a year ago and the price of onions has risen by more than 23 percent. Pulses, a major source of protein for the poor, now cost 42 percent more than they did a year ago.

In response to the latest inflation figures, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi said that “the price rise of essential commodities continues to be a matter of highest concern to us” and pledged that India’s Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance coalition government will take “every possible step” to address the issue.

UPA Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the government will strengthen the Public Distribution System, which offers select food items at fixed prices to those with low incomes, but failed to provide any details.

Mukherjee blamed the food price rises on a shortage of pulses on the international market, saying, “There is a shortage of pulses to the tune of 3-4 million tonnes and this deficit cannot be met through imports as there are not enough pulses in the international market. It is this scarcity that is pushing up the prices.”

This is a cynical attempt to shirk the responsibility of India’s elite for the current crisis and the acute economic insecurity in which the vast majority of Indians live.

Since last spring, India’s agricultural sector, upon which more than 60 percent of the population depends for its livelihood, has been battered by drought. Floods also devastated crops and uprooted millions in some parts of the country during the late summer and fall. As a result, 278 of India’s 626 administrative districts have been declared drought or flood afflicted.

While the monsoons came late and rainfall was the scantest in four decades, the drought is not merely or even principally a natural calamity. After six decades of Indian independence, the bourgeoisie has failed to develop a proper irrigation-water management system. Consequently, the overwhelming majority of India’s peasant farmers are wholly dependent on the monsoons to water their crops, meaning the threat of crop failures and food shortages and price rises is ever-present.

As a result of this year’s poor monsoons, India’s production of rice is expected to fall by 18 percent in 2009, from 84.6 tons to 69.5 million tons, and India, the world’s second largest producer and biggest consumer of sugar, will be forced to import sugar for the first time in many years. In 2007-2008, India exported 5 million tons of sugar, but next year it is anticipated it will import an equivalent amount.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/indi-d15.shtml