Combating inflation opens up new area of political contestation

Consumer price inflation refuses to come down and is led by food inflation, at 7.66% in May. Onions are already making the wrong kind of news and expectations of poor monsoon rains lead on to expectations of poor harvests and higher prices as well.

Combating inflation opens up a new area of political contestation that can put to the test political parties’ constructive imagination in the service of the people. If the Opposition imagines that bringing inflation down and helping the growth process would only go to the credit of the ruling party and the Narendra Modi government, and refuses to act on this front, it would make a big mistake.

What the past few assembly and national elections have shown is that local action and mobilisation mop up credit even for schemes conceived and sponsored by the Centre. The point is to be at the centre of the action on the ground.

Rise in the price of cereals is entirely due to mismanagement of official stocks. The government should dump the grain in its huge stocks in frequent open-market sales at numerous locations across the country. Fruit, vegetables, milk and poultry inflation is more challenging to tackle.

Here, the task really is to manage the supply chain to get rid of huge middlemen margins, waste and inefficiency. This calls for agglomeration of fresh produce at collection centres, its transportation in refrigerated trucks to consuming centres and timely distribution to retail outlets.

If a large retail chain takes this on, well and good. May their tribe increase. But the first step of agglomerating fresh produce still needs to be done. That means organising farmers into cooperatives or producer companies that collect, clean, grade and pack fresh produce every day for collection by trucks of the transporter.

Precipitating activity that benefits the people will upset vested interests and established power hierarchies. This is why a political party rather than an NGO is best suited to carry out this organisation. But, of course, this would call for a new politics where grassroots-level activism is more important than courting the distant leader.