I came across this interesting statistic in a tamil weekly yesterday. Astonishing price rise isn't it?
Yet we see no protests about it anywhere! Price of bengal gram is expected to double in a few days and rice, our staple food, is becoming deliriously expensive. Remember the nation wide protests over food prices during the late 90s? Still worse, people in Chennai protested for a 1 Re. hike in price on city bus fares a decade back.
What do we infer from this scenario? Don't protests happen because people today have the capability to squeeze in these high differences in their monthly budgets?
A few people say yes. They say that the Indian consumer today is fed by svelte super markets which have spoiled him with choice and quality. Prices don't just matter anymore.
Or have we lost appetite for battling?
Some people say yes. They say that the low income group is completely protected from price rise by the rationing system. The main victim here is the urban middle class man, who earns between $200 and $400 a month, works for more than 10 hours a day and spends more than 3 hours in commuting through peevish traffic from workplace to home everyday.
The poor man is tired of facing political bureaucracy and has little energy to protest. Instead, he prefers to fight price rise by skipping those weekend trips to multiplexes and stays home, watching reality shows on satellite television.
Thanks Srinath, for your insights. I beg to differ about few issues. In urban setup, protest are usually political in nature. Aam aadmi has "chalta hai" attitude in India. They are content with what ever is happening and don't take any actions if it personally does not harm them. The issue such as inflation requires momentum from various political and apolitical group to gather people and rage against government. I think its if failure on the part of activism group to keep numb about such a serious issues.
ReplyDeleteSecond, Our PDS ( Public Distribution System) is handicap and I think price rise seriously worsen the condition of people at bottom of pyramid.
- Abhishek Nawab Bhati
True. There are many more dimensions to the issue, I only highlighted a few. But in the case of Tamil Nadu, PDS is fairly good as it plays an active role in mainstream politics. From rice @ 1 Re/kg to free colour television sets, you get what you want. (It takes another blog entry to describe the welfare economics behind this!)
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