Vegetable prices go skyward after rain

Ludhiana: With heavy rainfall disturbing life across the northern region of the country, middle-class families are already facing a challenge with the prices of vegetables coming from far-flung parts of the nation seeing an upward trend. Prices of garlic and ginger and taro roots in the retail vegetables markets of the city continued to remain on the higher side even in the second week of March.
Moreover, under such circumstances the commonly consumed vegetables like broccoli and capsicum were out of bound for middle class families. Rajan Yadav, a vegetable vendor at one of the busiest vegetable markets in Business City, said, “Due to bad weather and coronavirus scare, vegetables coming from Maharashtra and Bihar side have been affected the most as prices of garlic and ginger and taro root are still out of bounds for middle-class families and were being sold for Rs100 per kg and above.”
“There are chances of a hike in prices of green peas, tomato, onion and certain other vegetables in the retail markets as these are also transported from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The vendors don’t know the exact reason behind these high prices of capsicum and okra as they are selling at Rs 80 per kg in every retail market of the city,” he added.
Another vendor from Jalandhar bypass vegetable market Jatin Kumar said, “The prices of other vegetables, toro root and broccoli were on higher side of the graph too and remained above Rs 100 per kg since the beginning of December. Middlemen or agents are earning huge profits as they have started selling vegetables stored in cold storages.”
Speaking on the issue, Anjali Sharma, a housewife, said, “This winter there were a lot of challenges for the middle class families as first the onion prices disturbed the house budget and now the hike in ginger and garlic prices. The central government should make some polices in this direction to control these prices.”
Ritika Verma, a home-maker of Sarabha Nagar, says, “After onion and tomatoes, now the prices of ginger and garlic have started disturbing the budget of middle-class families. There is no option left for us but to buy it in small quantities and try to manage the household budget.” She further said, “The government should do something to bring down the prices of commonly consumed vegetables by Rs 15-20 or even more.”