Anantapur: Poor, lower middle class hit hard by spiralling prices

Anantapur: Common man's economy has had miserably derailed with no immediate hope of recovery. While nothing has changed for the common man, daily wage earner and the lower middle class workers in the private sector are the worst hit as the wages that were cut by 40 -50 percent has not been restored to the pre-Covid position.

The skyrocketing prices of vegetables and essential grocery items are a matter of grave concern for the poor and lower middle class sections. With news of third wave doing the rounds, the spiraling inflation is landing the middle-class sections in a jittery as the earnings and escalating budget is unmatchable, say lower middle class housewives.

The poor at least have a solace as government welfare money keep coming to them but for the lower middle class it is an unending battle for survival.

Nalini, Shanthi and Mary residents of Sujathanagar complained, "The prices of groundnut, domestic oils, rice, sugar and pulses including yellow, green and red gram dals etc registered 25 per cent hike over last year during the pandemic. Even vegetables and milk recorded a 25 per cent hike in costs and in monthly kitchen budget and to top it all the LPG gas and petrol prices continuous upward climb has broken the back of women struggling to reconcile earnings and expenditure," the women bemoaned.

"To keep the wheels of kitchen moving, single bread winners in the family are slipping into indebtedness," say Shalini, mother of two daughters widowed by coronavirus which snatched away her husband in second wave in 2021.

"The chief minister thinks about only the BPL families but what about the lower middle class families who pay their taxes honestly and are struggling to live because of elephantine inflation that is crushing vulnerable among the middle-class. The chief minister should give pension support to single mothers, who lost their husbands to Covid-20," says Madhubala, a private school teacher widowed by Covid-21 and raising 3 children.