More than a decade ago, onions were used to be sold at very reasonable price and at that time no one ever thought that onions will disappear from their plates in the future. In the old times, onion was present even in the poor man's plate. However, today, many poor families of India are cooking their food without onion because the rise in its prices.
The most worrying sign is that onion prices rise year after year, but our government doesn't take necessary steps to provide the onions at reasonable rates. Onion is one such item which affect all most all homes in India; therefore, it does have a political significance. Many political parties in the past lost elections due to the rising prices of onion.
However, the big worrying sign is that there is no concrete mechanism available to control the prices of onion. Though, governments have learnt their lesson and they take necessary steps like banning the export of onions to ease the prices back home. Governments do start selling onions at a controlled rate at government stores; however, all these steps are not enough to stop the suffering of the common man.
The some of the main reasons of increase in prices of onion are-
1) Damage to onion crop due to rain. (Main reason)
2) Problems in the supply chain
3) High demand of onion
4) Presence of middlemen at every step
5) Bad weather
6) High export of onions
7) High Food inflation
8) Absence of a good policy of Onion
The main problem with this issue is that governments are not pro-active in this case and there is no good policy to keep the prices of onion under control. The gap in purchasing power of urban and countryside consumers is also pushing these prices to higher side.
In the price war, the poor and middle class of India suffer the most and the sad thing is that they make the majority of Indian population. However, at this point it looks that no one wants to solve this problem and in the coming months too, we will keep on seeing an increase in prices of onion.
