Inflation: The countdown has begun

The animal who calls himself a journalist is a rabid one, for he finds succour in disaster and headlines in tragedy. This animal seldom uses his eyes, rarely taxes his heart muscles and never bothers to use his senses or brain. In the process, this torch-bearer of the Fourth Estate; the self-ordained guardian of the people’s voice and mouthpiece of the masses; ends up being a lapdog of the watchdogs. This upper-echelon canine pocket-wimp – after years of being tonsured by the watchdogs’ largesse – develops a skin tough as steel, thick enough to repel the pin-pricks of the vestiges of his flickering conscience.

When things smelly hit the fan, this doggie doo doesn’t reach for his pen, but for a brush; to paint up a masterpiece that captures the stench of the nation’s putrefaction on a real canvas that somehow remains blank. For the lapdog is blank, the putrefaction real. I could go on, waxing eloquent on the many other virtues of this forsaken puppet, but that would be a waste of newsprint. What needs to be written is what our journalist pocket puppies will not; the plight of a majority of Indians today. A smattering of reversals plagues the nation; be it unemployment, caste- and religion-based unrest, rising intolerance, communal fervour, changing weather patterns and their debilitating impact, global condemnation of some of our policies, a stuttering economy, and more. But the very real thwack every Indian, rich or poor, is facing is price rise – runaway inflation that seems to have laid its roots deep into the inner core of mere desh ki dharti. Inflation. So bad that I have never seen anything quite like this.

“A dying man will…” pipes up an old adage, going on to list all that near-death can make us do. Such as gasp for breath or clutch at straws, anything that will keep us alive, help us survive. Similar to this croaking soul are India’s billion-plus, stretching their rupee to endure this merciless inflation and subsist. This time around, this variant of inflation is mutated; it is hitting everyone, again and again. And again.

The other day, I decided to take an auto-rickshaw to a marketplace in Delhi to avoid parking hassles. My mobile app told me AC cabs were seeking Rs 110 for 1.4 km, while the humble auto was demanding Rs 150. I scoured other apps and made calls; I came away the wiser and walked home. This is how it is. For short-distance travel, cabs charge around Rs 100 per km, while autos are more expensive at over Rs 125 a km. That same evening, returning from the new Parliament House, 7-odd km from my home, an AC cab asked for Rs 190, while a highly discounted auto was Rs 304.32 (pre-discount rate Rs 362.29). The time was near midnight, when no metro rail or buses are lurking around the corner as an alternative.

Reaching home with a thinner wallet, I decided to cook to save money instead of ordering in. Cauliflower was Rs 200 a kg, tomatoes Rs 80, onions Rs 57 and even the frugal beans Rs 200. If I did muster up the courage to procure them, I would have to cook them in oil @ Rs 140 a litre, toss in turmeric powder @ Rs 60 per 100 gm, red chilli powder @ Rs 80 per 100 gm, zeera @ Rs 60 per 100 gm, salt at Rs 25 per kg (bless that man in the currency notes), and garnish the end-result with fresh coriander @ Rs 40 per bunch. Enough bull%$#@ and balderdash – I ordered a chicken burger and fries @ Rs 160.

Cause for serious thought Sometimes, people wonder – if this is the going rate for vegetables and fruit, what the deuces are India’s farmers protesting about? They should be raking it in, rushing to get their chosen avatar of the latest SUV that gives them the most bragging rights. If only… The simple truth is that most farmers have tiny tracts of land, often on lease or mortgaged to financiers with astronomical interest pay-outs. They face a plethora of imponderables; for instance, more than ‘some’ rain causes a problem; no rain causes a bigger problem. If they manage to lay their hands on some fertilisers, there is a problem of high input costs and ‘non-organic’ produce; if they find no fertilisers, pests and locusts are there to smite off. On a bad day, there are cattle and even elephants to contend with. And when they do manage to conquer it all, their produce and life depends on the whims of the man with the cold storage facility. If all goes well there, moneylenders and bankers step in.

Sometimes, it turns out to be too much. In 2022, 11,290 persons involved in the farming sector (5,207 farmers and 6,083 labourers) committed suicide, accounting for 6.6 per cent of total suicides. Over the past decade, 112,000 people working in the agricultural sector have committed suicide, as per statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau. Farmers who don’t take the extreme step do radical things too. For instance, some in Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra took their produce to a hillside and simply threw it away. The cost of transport to the ‘mandis’ was greater than what they would have been paid. The cauliflower you and I pay Rs 200 for was fetching the farmer Rs 3 per kg. Net result: while some fed their produce to their livestock to save on feed costs, heart-broken middlemen downed their sorrows at the nearest liquor vend. Something’s got to give This column has become a bit about farmers, but everyone else is on a leaking boat too. Earnings are small and getting smaller, costs are high and getting higher. Given this backdrop, something has got to give.

Even the Spanish saying, A lo lecho, pecho (“What cannot be cured has to be endured”) will hold good for only so long. Sooner or later, the barricades will be brought crashing down. “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart and seeing with his or her eyes,” talk-show host Oprah Winfrey said. That is in the rich and developed United States. But it holds good in not-so-rich and not-yet-developed India as well. Here, empathy is about standing in the kitchen, looking at the meagre spread sitting raw on the faux granite slab, wondering how to rustle up a meal that will not just feed, but even enthuse, the family of six that waits expectantly in the other room. Our Ministers and rule-makers would do well to follow this simple dictum. Empathy. Understanding. Largesse. Sustenance. Development. Growth. In that order. Then, and only then shall the ‘powered’ perhaps witness and feel what’s happening in the real India. And they and their lap-puppies might, just perhaps, then also appreciate the price of onions, garlic and auto-rickshaws.