Onion price inflation leads to export ban of beloved crop

NEW DELHI » Truckloads of onions are being turned back at the Indian border. Officials are threatening raids to prevent onion smuggling. India’s neighbors, reliant on hundreds of millions of pounds of the crop, are reeling from the news: Not a single onion can leave India.

Hit first by drought and then by monsoon rains, India suffered an onion shortage that nearly tripled the price in recent months, edging close to a third rail of politics in many countries: the national diet.

In India, onions — so important to the cuisine all around the country and across South Asia — are central to foreign policy and domestic harmony alike. Indian governments have been brought down over inflated food prices before.

“Without onions, food is incomplete and colorless,” lamented Charu Singh, a researcher in New Delhi. “I’ve had to change my entire cooking style.”

With joblessness rising and India’s economic woes piling up, Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to tackle the onion shortage this week. Not only did his administration ban onion exports, it is also cracking down on onion hoarding.

Retailers and wholesalers now have strict limits on what they can keep on hand. They have to sell the rest.

The move showed where Modi is ultimately most vulnerable: the economy.

Outside the country, he has been harshly criticized for his decision to strip Kashmir of its autonomy, send in thousands of troops and effectively cut off much of the disputed territory from the outside world.