Price hike of onion: It's criminal

If the announcement of an official embargo on export of a commodity or its extension by a country triggers an outright double price escalation overnight and two and a half times the following day in another country, it is a disgrace. Disgrace, because traders of the item---in this case onion, the price of which was intriguingly skyrocketed at Tk 100 plus --- in Bangladesh can resort to such nasty ploys and the administration looks helpless let alone take any decisive action against the players playing foul. Not that there has been a severe crisis of this popular cooking item. It cannot become short in supply overnight. If the official statistics is correct, Bangladesh could be self-sufficient in growing onion because against its demand for 2.6 million tonnes, it reportedly produced 3.4 million tonnes. However, avoidable waste during harvest and in storage compel it to import 600,000-700,000 tonnes mostly from India annually. Between April and September, it imported 490,000 tonnes from its big neighbours.

The stock has not depleted, let alone dried up. Also the new harvest of onion has started arriving in the market. By the next week, the supply of new harvest will increase appreciably. So this insensible move by the onion syndicate is highly deplorable. Already it has pushed up the price to the record price registered in November 2019 when a kilogram of onion was sold at Tk 250. Will the price go further up for yet another record? There is every likelihood it will. The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection (DNCRP) has launched a drive against hoarding and fined as many as 133 trading houses to no effect.

Realising fines from traders has now become a useless ritual. In this case, the amount of total fines realised from 133 trading houses was Tk666,000 or, a paltry amount of Tk5,008 on an average. Does it hurt the traders who are making profit at astronomical levels? Conceptually, this is light punishment for a grave crime. Burglars and robbers, considered dangerous criminals, are only so if they commit homicide; otherwise they do not cause financial bleeding to the mass people like the looters and robbers in the guise of members of a trading syndicate. Their offence need to be reviewed in legal parameters for meting out far stricter punishment to the criminals. In countries where the dispensations are authoritarian, any crime of this order would have invited the worst possible punishment for the perpetrators.

No community of a society can be so mindless to the sufferings of the rest of society in order to serve its own selfish interests. The business syndicates have been doing it openly with impunity and now enjoy blessings from powerful quarters or otherwise they would not have dared commit such crimes against the nation. Economists lament that social disparity is on the rise in leaps and bounds. A look at the nominees for parliamentary election can provide an answer to why. More than 99 per cent candidates submitting their financial statements have gained wealth many times over in the past few years. The poor and the marginalised have become poorer. If such open exploitation continues, it bodes ill of society ---one that is destined to lose equilibrium and sanity.