GUWAHATI, Nov 1 - Skyrocketing prices in the last few months has made pulses a luxury for the common people and a number of retail outlets of the city have even stopped keeping dal as there are very few takers.
Though the shortfall in production is attributed as one of the main reasons for the sharp increase in prices, the failure of the Government to import adequate quantities on time to meet the shortfall also resulted in the present scenario.
In the markets of Guwahati, the price of arhar dal doubled in the last one year, while the prices of other dals also registered sharp increase, thus making it impossible for the common people to afford the same.
The price of arhar dal was around Rs 80 to Rs 90 per kg about a year back, but now the price has shot up to Rs 180 and more, depending on the market. Similarly, the price of moong dal shot up from Rs 90 a kg to Rs 120 or more, while, the price of masur dal shot up from Rs 76 a year back to more than Rs 100 now.
A few shop owners told The Assam Tribune that though prices started increasing about a year back, the situation worsened during the last couple of months and sales have obviously dropped abnormally. Most of the retailers even stopped keeping arhar dal in their shops as there are no takers. The price of mustard oil also recorded an increase of Rs 20 to Rs 25 per litre during the last couple of months.
A leading businessman of the city, on condition of anonymity, said that drought-like situation in the pulse producing States is one of the reasons. Consumption in the state increases by around eight percent a year, but the availability has not increased, and this year the availability has even decreased.
In addition to shortage of production, wrong policies of the Government can be another major reason as the demand and availability were not monitored properly and timely action not taken to import adequate quantity on time. Moreover, dal and other pulses are not distributed through the Public Distribution System, which added to the miseries of the common people. At one point of time, the State Government used to provide some relief to the consumers by distributing food items at subsidised rate to the consumers through the Statefed but the organisation is now defunct and the Government has not taken any measure to revive the same or to set up other such organisations to give some relief to the common people.
Only now, the Government of India has decided to increase import of pulses, but such steps could have been taken long back to prevent sharp rise in prices.
Meanwhile, according to records available in the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, the production of pulses in the country was 18,343 thousand tonnes in 2012-13 and it increased to 19780 thousand tonnes in 2013-14. But the production dropped to 17200 thousand tonnes in the last financial year, which resulted in the crisis.
However, imports have not increased accordingly to meet the domestic demand. The total import of pulses in 2014-15 was 4,584.84 thousand tonnes but during the period from April to July this year, only 1,495 thousand tonnes of pulses were imported, which failed to meet the shortfall of production and resulted in sharp increase in price.
