Today Editorial.....

The demonetisation drive is likely to push up food prices, particularly the non-grain part. Here is why. In terms of value, vegetables, fruit, fish, milk and its by-products like cheese and paneer are 65 per cent of farming. Even prior to demonetisation, a goodly share of this valuable produce used to rot(सड़न), before reaching any market. Today, as vegetable and fruit growers grumble(बड़बड़ाना), there is no cash to pay people who will harvest the vegetables and fruit on your plate. A drop in supply and rise in vegetable, and food, prices are highly probable.

Now, the harvesting of grain — rice and wheat — which will begin soon, has been mechanised. Harvesters will do the job that needed many person-hours at the rate of Rs 400 per day before demonetisation. But how will people pay for harvesting machines in a time of acute cash scarcity(कमी)? From Bengal to Punjab, we hear tales of acute farm distress.

 But these states also grow much of vegetables, fruit and other edibles that we cannot do without. Unlike grain, whose harvesting can be mechanised, the plucking of vegetables, fruit, fish farming, dairying and poultry rearing is highly labour-intensive. Some estimates say 90 per cent of the total cost of horticulture and other non-grain produce is the cost of wages that need to be paid to mainly migrant or seasonal workers. With cash drying up, there are reports of a large outmigration of jobless workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal and Odisha from the plush farms of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

Deprived(वंचित) of money, the main dairy, pisciculture(मछली पालन) and vegetable and fruit cultivating areas of India will also be deprived of workers. It is anybody’s guess how this cash to worker to output shortage will contribute to food price inflation. It will be tragic(दुखद) for the poor. It might also affect you, dear reader.

1)Rot meaning is corrosion, disintegration, decay

2)Grumble meaning is murmur, rumble, complain, carp

3)Scarcity meaning is deficiency, dearth, drought, lack 

4)Pisciculture meaning is fish farming

5)Deprived meaning is impoverished, destitute, disadvantaged

6)Tragic meaning is catastrophic, very bad, appalling, awful