Rising Onion Prices Tempt Highway Robbers in India

Amit Dave/Reuters Workers filling sacks with onions after sorting them at a wholesale market in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on July 17.

NEW DELHIâ€" On Saturday night, Mintu Chottelal, 30, a mini truck driver and his helper, Rinku Gujjar, 19, were driving along the Delhi-Jaipur Highway on their way from the town of Nagore in Rajasthan to the town of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. Suddenly a minivan came to a halt in front of them, three men jumped off the vehicle, overpowered Mr. Chottelal and Mr. Gujjar, and drove away with their loot.

They did not get far. About an hour later, Rajasthan police chased them down and recovered the truck, which carried 9000 kilograms of onions.

“I have never heard of anything like this before,” Bhawani Singh, a police officer at the Shahpura police station about 50 miles from Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, said in a phone interview, “but onion prices are so high, it makes sense,” he said.

The three onion robbers managed to escape and are still absconding, according to Ram Kishore, a Sub-Inspector at the Shahpura Police station, where the driver of the truck had lodged a complaint.

At the prevailing onion prices, the stash would be worth anywhere between five to seven hundred thousand rupees (between $7779 and $10880).

According to official figures released in July this year, the price of the onions has risen more than 100 percent from June last year. Last week as the capital got busy with Independence Day celebrations, the price of onion hit 80 rupees per kilogram ($1.25), in some parts of the country, spawning speculations that it would cross the 100 rupee-mark.

Anaro Devi, a 70-year-old vegetable seller in central Delhi, who is already selling green chilies at 100 rupees a kilogram, says she has never seen such a steep rise in vegetable prices. This week, Ms. Devi said, she sold 4 to 5 kilograms of onions daily at 60 rupees per kilogram.

Onion prices fell to 60 rupees per kilogram this week in the capital, following a slew of measures announced by the central and Delhi state governments to rein in soaring prices of onion.

The chief minister of Delhi on Monday said in a press conference that there was no shortage in the supply of onions.

Mrs. Devi laid the blame for the skyrocketing prices on the wholesalers. “The wholesalers are deliberately hoarding the onions so that prices go up,” she said. “The rich don’t know anything, it is the poor who are left to suffer.”

Last week, the government announced that it would be procuring onions directly from the major wholesale markets in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, two major onion-producing states in the country.

Despite the fact that India is the second largest producer of onions after China, the government in an Aug. 14 press release said that the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India will import onion from “other countries.”

Sanjeev Gupta/European Pressphoto Agency Supporters of India’s main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, protesting the spiraling price of onion in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, on Sunday.

In the capital, the soaring price of onions has ignited a political contest between the ruling Congress Party and the opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), who have been aggressively campaigning for the upcoming state assembly elections in November.

“Ours is a sensitive government. Hence, it acted swiftly on taking note of soaring onion prices,” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit said in a press conference on Monday.

“Outlets arranged by the city government have been selling onions around 45 rupees per kilogram,” she added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party this week opened special stalls to sell onions at rates significantly lower than the market price, in a bid to embarrass the government.

The party also found unusual ways of protesting the spiraling onion prices. Earlier last week, a member of the state legislature from B.J.P. deposited onions at a local bank, according to media reports. This week, on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan, a Hindu festival celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters, the party gifted onions to women who tied Rakhi, the sacred thread symbolizing the bond, to a Delhi B.J.P. leader, Sunil Yadav.

The Delhi chief minister on her part accused the opposition of “politicizing the issue” with their “gimmicks.”

But as the chief minister very well knows protesting expensive onions is no cheap political gimmick. It was one of the factors that cost the incumbent B.J.P. state government in Delhi dearly in 1998, when they were voted out of power.

“The Congress party, then the opposition, used the issue well to defeat us in the assembly elections,” Anil Jain, a B.J.P. national secretary said of the defeat.

For some people the onion price hike seems to be more than a political issue, but an issue of public safety.

Last Wednesday, a trader in the capital was allegedly attacked for selling onions at a price lower than the market rate, as part of the Delhi government’s plan.

Kajal Gurung, a 44-year-old homemaker residing in Mayur Vihar area of East Delhi, is least surprised by the incident in Jaipur.

“With the prices soaring so high, an incident like this was just waiting to happen,” she said in a telephone interview.

“A bag of onions in my hand has a greater chance of being stolen than a ring or a bracelet,” Mrs. Gurung said.