People need to produce some essentials in kitchen garden

Bhubaneswar: Lemon has vanished from the vegetable basket of the household because of its high price of Rs.10 a piece. Quarter kg (250 gm) tomato (more than Rs.100 a kg here) is peeping from the corner of the vegetable basket. Though all are blaming the Russia- Ukraine war for the soaring prices, is it the only cause for the food inflation?

Why the consumer will buy a lemon at Rs 10. Is not it a choice to buy it or the costlier tomato? Is it an indispensable thing, without which people cannot survive? Anyone can survive without tomato or lemon. But it is a choice, which the consumer will choose.

If the consumer doesn't buy the product, then the price of the product will automatically be normal. Scarcity may be natural or artificial, but shortage of a product will create a demand and supply gap. If people depend upon more on their kitchen garden and produce some essential things in their house it will help them and the country to maintain the price balance.

Traditional farming is a choice to overcome the issue of price rise, though some people also have argued that how can they grow the vegetable in their flat. With the changing time the technology has also developed for making green in the flats. So sustain in the society, the choice is ours.

Prices of vegetables normally go up in this season due to low production. Less availability of a product means rise of price. Fuel costs also play an important role in the cost of every product.

Before some years maximum people usually depended more on their kitchen gardens and reared fish in small ponds at the backyard of their houses and also reared the cows and buffalos for their family sustenance. But now with barren lands, the life style of people, the choice of them has diverted them from their root. In those days people depended on market for limited items like edible oils, kerosene, petrol, salt. Maximum products were either produced by them or were available in nearby village markets or they were directly purchased from farmers.

Prices increase every day, but still we are depending on the market, Why? Due to personal choice. Though price rise may not impact the affluent, bureaucrats, senior officers, high pension holders, the middle classes, which are more in number, are suffering much.

- Saumya Saraswata Panda, lecturer, Bhubaneswar saumyasaraswata@gmail.com