A broad rise in prices of food essentials in the northeast region, driven by uneven and scanty rain during July and then torrential rains in August has resulted in prices of various food items showing an upward spiral. Erratic climate conditions – including the driest August in more than a century – have sent food prices spiralling above 11% in India, which is a major player in global agri-trade. Just as tomato prices begin cooling down, onions have gotten dearer by a quarter since June in the domestic market. Also pulses which go into making the humble dal (lentil soup) are now around 20% more expensive than at the beginning of the year. The rise in prices of food items has led to some economists describing the situation as India\u2019s \u201ccurry problem\u201d, as the cost of a regular vegetarian meal jumped by a third in the month of July alone. In the northeast, locally grown vegetables have come under the control of various syndicates. This can be gauged from the steep rise in prices of pork , fish and broiler chicken within a space of a little over one year. When prices of commodities in Dimapur rise, they have a cascading and multiply effect on the prices in other districts. In Dimapur, the rise is particularly startling in non-vegetable items such as meat, fish or poultry products. The common people who have to pay sky high prices will continue to suffer because no one is interested in protecting their rights. This is a grim scenario but it reveals the economic plight that continues to confront several thousand families in Nagaland who are left to grapple with day to day conditions. Rise in price of various items in the market does not augur well for the common people and which calls for urgent intervention by the local authorities. The fluctuations in prices of vegetables cannot be so wide as to be as high as nearly cent percent though it is expected that there could be significant rise. It is also found that the market at nearby Khatkhati, which had nothing much to show a few years back, has today become a thriving market with thousands from Dimapur travelling kilometres to buy vegetables, meat and poultry products. The other emerging trend is that Khatkhati is also turning into a commercial township offering cement, MS Rod, fixtures and other building materials at much cheaper rate than Dimapur. Even today, there is a growing number of customers who procure various construction items from either Khatkhati or Bokajan. Prices of various food and other items in the market at Dimapur are certainly well above the acceptable level. This is a serious problem that also \u2018inspires\u2019 cunning and shewd traders in Khatkhati and Bokajan to \u2018hike\u2019 prices much above their current rates but mindful to keep them slightly below rates at Dimapur. Price monitoring cannot be left solely at the hands of the municipal council since it offers very little guarantee that someone would not manipulate the prices. What is needed is to constitute a wide bodied market price monitoring committee comprising of the civic body, administration, police, business associations and NGOs etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A broad rise in prices of food essentials in the northeast region, driven by uneven and scanty rain during July and then torrential rains in August has resulted in prices of various food items showing an upward spiral. Erratic climate conditions – including the driest August in more than a century – have sent food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}