It has been over a month now that I am back in India. Many of my friends told me to pick up my blog and start writing again. Many asked me the reason to have stopped writing. Honestly there was no reason other than the fact that "I didn't feel like writing about anything".
Today, I did feel like writing though. No.. I am not going to write about how I came back to India from US.. and the transition story.
I was deeply disturbed while watching usual "political drama filled" news after daily chores.
New anchor in his no melodramatic voice was talking about soaring vegetable prices which has gone up to Rs 60-80/kg and are expected to reach Rs. 150-200/kg in coming weeks. It was not the prices of those vegetables that disturbed me but what they showed after that.
In the next segment of news they showed a bite of a farmer talking about those same vegetable prices. Reporter was asking price of each vegetable to the farmer and the farmer was giving him prices one by one.
Reporter: vangi? (eggplant)
farmer: Rs. 8/kg
Reporter: bhendi (okra)
farmer: Rs. 10/kg
This went on for sometime and then the reporter asked some other vegetable to which farmer replied "नाही ते जर महाग आहे…. १२ -१५ /kg" (No it is bit costly, around Rs. 12-15/kg).
I was shocked!!! How does the transportation and storage collectively under distribution channel increases the cost by about 8-10 times? Should the value addition in distribution channel (and hence cost addition) not be some percentage of production cost?
Call it anything.. but this is the first time I felt something is horribly wrong..
P.S.: Please do not feel like I am whining about vegetable prices and or corrupt system.
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