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Journalism of Courage
Onions have brought tears to many a government’s eye, and the long march of 20,000 angry farmers and Adivasis from Nashik to Mumbai this past week has been no exception.
The Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government had been getting ample warnings of the problem in the making, owing to a glut in production and reduced demand. It finally took the long march for the government to scramble together a reaction, with the protesters holding out till it promised to live up to its word.
What prompted the 200-km walk was the sharp fall in onion prices in Maharashtra from Rs 1,100 per quintal to Rs 450. This was compounded in some parts of the state by unseasonal rain and hailstorm, destroying the standing crop. In some villages, farmers threw their onion stocks into the fire as part of Holika.
Maharashtra accounts for up to 40 per cent of the country’s onion production. Asia’s biggest onion market is Lasalgaon in Nashik district in North Maharashtra. At around 40 lakh, onion farmers make a sizeable vote bank in the state.
As the 20,000 protesters set off from Nashik, the matter soon reverberated in the ongoing Assembly session, with Opposition parties seeing a chance to corner the Shinde Sena-BJP government.
Finally, the government tried to settle the matter by announcing an ex-gratia subsidy of Rs 300 per quintal, raising it later to Rs 350.
However, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) which is leading the long march put forward a 17-point charter of demands, including compensation of Rs 600 per quintal to farmers for their losses.
Seven-term former CPI(M) MLA Jiva Pandu Gavit, and the de-facto leader of the march, said, “In 2018, we walked from Nashik to Mumbai over one week. After that the then government led by Devendra Fadnavis assured us that all our demands, including higher remuneration to farmers for their crops, forest land rights and other issues would be met… But nothing happened. So, in 2019, we set out for a second long march. That was called off mid-way, again following reassurance from the state government. After five years, our farmers are facing the same ordeal, our Adivasis are living in uncertainty with no forest land title in their name.”
Government representatives who met a delegation of the AIKS assured that this time there won’t be a repeat and all their demands would be met. The state government also urged the National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation of India to procure onions to curtail the price fall.
An official in the Ministry of Cooperation and Marketing said there was very little the government could have done. “The crisis is due to a mismatch between demand and supply. Due to surplus stock in the domestic market as well as lack of demand outside Maharashtra, the prices have dipped.”
The current price collapse has primarily to do with a sudden rise in temperatures from around the second week of February. Onions containing high moisture are prone to quality deterioration from heat shock, with the abrupt drying-up leading to shrivelling of the bulbs.
“Normally, farmers would have been selling only the kharif crop now. But the extreme heat this time has forced them to offload even the late-kharif onions, which can no longer be stored. Since both kharif and late-kharif onions are arriving at the same time, prices have fallen,” Suresh Deshmukh, a commission agent who operates from the Dindori market, about 50 km from Lasalgaon, told The Indian Express recently.
This is coupled with the fall in demand from outside Maharashtra, which is on account of good rains and improved water availability inducing farmers in MP, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Gujarat to plant onions over a larger area. The influx of the bulb from all these states, together with the forced offloading of the late-kharif crop, triggered the price collapse.
Leader of Opposition Ajit Pawar of the NCP said the government should have reacted earlier. “When there is a farm crisis, government intervention should be quick so as to provide immediate relief to farmers,” he said.
In 2018, when onion prices dipped to Rs 200 per quintal, the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, including the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, had announced a Rs 150 crore package, plus Rs 200 per quintal as compensation.
Farmer leaders, including Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana chief Raju Shetti, had been warning the Shinde-Fadnavis government of an impending crisis since December 2022. During a conclave at Ahmednagar, Shetkari activists had tried to hurl onions on a Fadnavis convoy in protest, but had been stopped by police.
The prices of onion, a kitchen staple, have earlier too decided the course of politics. In 1980, when she came to power following the trouncing in the wake of Emergency, the late Indira Gandhi regained some of her lost political ground partially due to rising onion prices. The 1980 elections are often called the onion elections.
In 1998, when the BJP lost both the Delhi and Rajasthan Assembly elections, the polls followed a steep hike in onion prices to Rs 65 per kg.
