Indians endure rising food prices
As price of staples skyrockets, wholesalers and consumers wait for government to take anti-inflationary action.
Rising fuel prices and bad harvests in India are driving up the cost of some of the country’s basic staples, hurting wholesalers as well as consumers.
In December, the India food price index for some key vegetables jumped 30 per cent over the previous week. The price of onions, meanwhile, has risen by 350 per cent.
Food inflation has dislodged state governments in the past, and officials have recently banned onion exports and scrapped import duties to ease the country’s pain.
But amid worries that inflation is on the rise, India’s Congress party, which leads the ruling coalition, has to come up with a solution before the partial state elections later this year.
Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman reports from Hyderabad.