MP Govt says vegetables not essential commodity

NK SINGH

The food authorities are seriously considering a proposal to exempt vegetables from the essential commodities price control order imposed under the Defence of India Rules, it is learnt.

The reason for this 'back to the pavilion' step is said to be the miserable failure of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies to invoke DIR against vegetable dealers. The department, it is learnt, could not even collect data about vegetable prices, not to speak of enforcing the price line.

It may be mentioned that vegetables had been included in the list of essential commodities, whose prices were brought under the DIR price control order on August 28 last. Having failed to enforce the order, the authorities are now thinking of retracing the step and excluding vegetables from the provision of DIR.

Several factors, including the marketing system of vegetables and the impractical nature of the DIR order, are understood το have brought about this failure.

Instead of fixing the maximum market prices of commodities, the DIR ordinance provides for a maximum of 2 per cent profit- to the wholesalers and 4 per cent to the retailers. It is a tough job to smoothly carry out this order for any Government department, least of all the food department, which has already too many sick babies to nurse,

Even if they can maintain some sort of check-up on purchase and sale prices of the cereals, pulses and edible oils, It is practically impossible so far as seasonal vegetables and Some of the condiments and spices are concerned. There is virtually no record of these commodities available with the retailers. 

Further, it is common knowledge that the prices of vegetables are fixed through the typical method of auction at the very beginning of the production pipeline. In most of the cases, the producers directly bring vegetables to the sabzi-mandi, where it is sold to the wholesalers, who in turn auction it to the 'Phadia', the middlemen.

For all too obvious reasons, neither this practice can be checked in a 'free market economy nor any record of the auctioned vegetables and their prices can be maintained by the concerned authorities.

The government's plan to check the prices as a whole had proved to be a big hoax. For instance, the government controls wheat prices right from the beginning of the production pipeline, but nowhere, not even in the state capital itself, it is available at government-fixed prices. 

On October 16, the Collector of Bhopal fixed the prices of rice, pulses, and edible oils. sugar, potatoes and onion in the wake of the anti-price rise movement. The Government had fixed the maximum prices of potatoes and onions. It was a practical step and could have been executed provided an efficient and willing administrative machinery was set up for this purpose. 

However, this order was automatically scrapped only after 12 days when the seemingly all-too-powerful DIR came into force.

Meanwhile, vegetable prices, along with the prices of other commodities are ever going up, and people complain that the administration, which can certainly do a lot, is least bothered about it. The citizens council, which was supposed to hold a meeting a least once or twice a month, has not met since the first week of October.

Commented a cynic, was not the Essential Commodities Act supposed to be in force ever since 1956.

Hitavada 

December 19, 1973