Oil’s not well

While the rocketing groundnut oil prices have upset the consumers, the powerful millers of Saurashtra too are unhappy with the BJP.

Smrutiben Tilada, a middle-class housewife from Rajkot, has lost her taste for food these days. The reason is easy to trace, but difficult to remedy. It’s also a reason that may leave the BJP with a bitter taste in the forthcoming polls.

Tilada owes her distaste for food to the spiralling prices of groundnut oil, which have forced her to replace it with cotton seed oil. She is among the nearly 40 per cent of people who have developed a taste for groundnut oil which they are finding difficult to forego, and which has begun to spark irascibility against the Modi Government.

It all began in January 2007, when due to the shortage of kernel, the price crossed the record Rs 1,000 mark, the highest price in history. Since then, despite the arrival of new yield in October, the prices have continued the northward trend. In the past four days, the groundnut oil has registered a Rs 40 hike. With Rs 10 hike on Thursday, 20 kg of groundnut oil costs Rs 1,145. The rates are over 400 times more than the previous year. This, when during peak season for the groundnut crop, around 1.5 lakh tonne of kernels are flooding the 23 marketing yards in Saurashtra per day, and oil mills are functioning to their full capacity.

Says Uma Shah, a resident of Royal Park on Kalawad Road: “If the state government wants, there are many ways and laws like Prevention of Anti Social Activities Act (PASA) to keep the oil millers and prices in control. With more than Rs 500 hike in the past six months, my budget is has been severely affected. It’s definitely a big factor to consider when I would go to vote this December.”

Though the state government has raided the mills through the Civil Supply and Weights and Measures Department, and even sent millers behind bars under the PASA Act, it has failed to buy the buffer stock which can help lower the rates. It finally had to request the millers to reduce the rates by Rs 10-25 in March, which proved to be too little, too late.

Meanwhile, the powerful oil millers in Saurashtra—who have altered the fates of governments in the past—is a divided lot. There are more than 700 mills in various districts of Saurashtra, including Rajkot, Junagadh, Jamnagar and Amreli. Like farmers, most millers too belong to the Patel community. This time, SOMA President Uka Patel has made his liking for the Congress very public. Many other millers too are unhappy with the Modi Government for the raids. But if a section of millers from Rajkot is supporting the Congress, the Jamnagar and Junagadh millers are still loyal to the BJP. “As far as political affiliations are concerned, SOMA is a divided house,” says SOMA Vice-President Khimaji Gojia.

As far as the BJP is concerned, it could easily divide the votes as well.