Prices of essentials rise as supply falls
KOLKATA: Fear is not the only enemy residents of riot-hit Basirhat have to fight these days. With shops and markets closed since last Sunday and supply chains cut off, people are being forced to choose between hunger and an artificial inflation.
Supplies are dwindling and prices of vegetables, chicken, egg, fish, mutton and other perishable items are heading north.
Ruma Mandal, a homemaker from the Chapapara area near Basirhat town has been serving only potato curries to her family for the last few days.
“It is the only vegetable available in the local markets ever since tension gripped this area on Monday,” she said. “But potato is selling at a premium. Last week I paid ₹8 for a kilo and today I bought two kilos for ₹24,” she said.
Price of onion too have skyrocketed . Srinath Ghosh, a resident of the Bhyabla area, said onion used to be sold for ₹20 a kilo but “now we are paying anything between ₹30 and ₹32. There is an acute shortage of supply. Most of the shopkeepers are taking advantage of the situation” .
A district administration official said the difference in the demography of Basirhat town and that of the adjoining villages was responsible for the inflation.
“The town population comprises mostly of Hindus while the villagers are Muslims. Since the violence started, the villagers have stopped supplying farm and animal products to the towns. ” NEW DELHI: The bottom line of the communal flare-up in West Bengal’s Basirhat is that blood will hereafter be ritualistically spilled in the run-up to every election.
It is nobody’s case that communal violence is new to this country. Hindus and Muslims have clashed regularly through ages, but it is now they are going for each other’s throats with unfailing regularity in states readying for polls.
Sporadic and scattered religious violence preceded the last elections in Assam. Ditto with UP, which barring just one day, saw at least one riot daily over four years leading up to the 2017 assembly elections. The trigger in most cases was almost certainly one or a mix of reasons among a cocktail of emotive issues, ranging from meat found in Hindu temple to a Hindu girl eloping with a Muslim boy or vice versa. Petty disputes over parking to suspicion of cow smuggling and slaughter have also led to conflagrations.
But the pattern emerging in recent times is more disconcerting. Odisha is headed for crucial elections in 2019 and communal tensions have erupted on at least two occasions. A Facebook post sparked arson in the coastal town of Bhadrak some months ago followed by ugly skirmishes in the district of Kendrapara.
What Basirhat in North 24 Parganas of West Bengal has been