The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Purchasing power alien to them

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Monday, Apr 28, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Purchasing power alien to them

The skyrocketing cost, stoked by petroleum price hikes and inflation, has hit hard the lowest of low income and low income groups, writes R. Ilangovan

— Photos: P. Goutham

Sakthivel, a roadside fruit seller in Salem, and his family have to forgo one meal a day to keep the children feeding. (Right) Dalit couple Periyamma and Chinnapaiyan, standing before their hut, expressing their anguish over the price hike.

The 45-year-old Periyamma once had regret that she was not blessed with a child. Now she does not. This Dalit agriculture worker and her husband Chinnapayan who polishes the wooden doors and window panels lives in a hut in Vellakuttai Lake here. Their combined earning a day averages to Rs. 120. The couple living below the poverty line had lived a decent life till a year back.

But life today is not as peaceful and contended as it was a year back. I am happy that I am not bearing a child. Otherwise, our hands to mouth sustenance of today would have severely affected my child too.

Why should an innocent suffer? asks Periyamma who is struggling to meet both ends meet due to the spiralling cost of essential commodities and vegetables.

For her vegetable means a few wild greens, home-grown drumsticks and tomatoes that have been relegated as unfit for consumption from wholesale markets.

In fact a parallel market, which sells discarded and rotten vegetables, has emerged on the streets adjoining the wholesale market here to cater to the needs of the consumers like Periyamma.

Another Dalit, a cart-pulling fruit vendor in the city, M. Sakthivel (35) has a similar tale of woe to spin. For him, his wife S. Indira, a homemaker and their two children, Jaya (4) and Sivakumar (3), the life has become an ordeal as the entire family has to sustain on the meagre income of Sakthivel, the sole breadwinner, who brings home Rs 90 after a hard days labour.

Here the young parents have to forgo a meal per day to keep feeding their two children. I have put my daughter in a school nearby. But now I have withdrawn her unable to pay even the paltry fees of Rs. 50 a month, Sakthivel says.

His dream of making his children as the first generation graduates of his family has thus vanished.

The escalating cost has ushered in a few bizarre problems, which he has never encountered so far. Apart from giving regular amount to a few Corporation and Police officials for his road side selling he has to give free of cost some ripened fruits too as additional dole. Every one is feeling the pinch of the price rise, he chuckles.

The skyrocketing cost, stoked by petroleum price hikes, and inflation has hit hard the lowest of low income and low income groups people, a majority of whom are Dalit workers and workers on daily wages. For them rice in open market, tamarind, dal, oils and tomatoes have become rare commodities. The word purchasing power to them is as alien as the words such as futuristic trading, globalisation, hoarding and inflation, cited as major reasons for escalating prices.

But amid these sufferings the silver lining for the Dalits and low income families in the district is the distribution of rice for Rs. 2 a kg being supplied by the State. Though it has its own shortcomings such as bad smell and short quantity, the Rs. 2 a kg rice has become the mainstay of many a families in the State particularly in Salem district which is heavily labour-intense.

Many, however, charge that the rice has to be polished before consumed. “Though I buy it for Rs. 2, I have to spend Rs. 4 for polishing the same in rice mills before it could be consumed. We request the Government to supply good rice without foul smell”, says Periyamma. Many others endorse the view.

The district has 8.20 lakh rice cards.

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