Politics of Price Rise

Constant price rise has seriously affected the common man in India. Every year people bear the brunt of a two-digit inflation and the government shamelessly claims that they have taken every measure to curb it. While the prime minister of our country is a noted economist, the failure of the government to check the inflation only reminds us that politics always overshadows the wisdom of intellectuals. It hardly matters how powerful intellectuals take over the top job, the compulsion of politics is more important than the welfare of a nation.

So if the debate on price rise in Parliament on Wednesday was unassumingly hot, there is nothing unprecedented in it. The Opposition always looks for an opportunity to stall the parliamentary procedures, and price rise is certainly the right topic to choose from hundred others. But the problem here is that not a single political party in this country has the right think-tank to understand the problems of people. Politics has always been the facade of bad governance, and especially in India, politics is even nastier than that. So blaming a single political party will not yield any result. The problem lies somewhere which people never know.

For instance, when there is a hike in oil prices, which may be a genuine requirement because of price rise in crude oil, the Opposition makes furor over the issue by mixing other stretched imaginations that food price will affect the poor since transportation cost will sharply go up. All false arguments and distortion of facts and nothing more than that. In reality, when the oil price rises just 5-10%, the food prices rises 50-100%. So where is the logic? Isn't this a pretext to betray people by spreading wrong message?

We understand that hike in oil price has impact on transportation cost, but that's not rational to claim that x% rise in oil price will trigger a 5x% rise in food prices. These are certainly emotive issues since they impact the life of poor people in this country; however, rise in food prices has many other parameters as well which are invisible to people. For example, illegal hoarding of food grains and vegetables is a matter of apathetic bureaucratic issue, but every year this happens so infallibly that the the nexus of traders and bureaucrats almost takes the entire advantage of price rise.

So the point here that the recent uproar in Parliament on price rise is absolutely a non-issue. Rather the government should dig deeper into the unholy nexus between businessmen or traders and bureaucrats so that a sure-shot solution can be availed to the people of this country. For that we certainly need a strong Lokpal Bill as an anti-corruption solution. The government must internalize the fact that so long as the steel frame of this country is not bridled into a strong checks-and-balances act, the price rise Frankenstein will engulf the entire system.