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Monday, May 05, 2008
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Price rise hits Andamans household budgets

Ramya Kannan

Islanders being pushed beyond tolerance limits

PORT BLAIR: If spiralling prices are affecting people of the mainland, then, on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where prices have always been comparatively higher, inflation has literally taken the roof off the islander’s monthly budget.

With very little indigenous produce (except coconuts and areca nuts) from the island itself, the problem is compounded in the Andamans as the group of islands depends on the mainland for nearly all its supplies. By the time a product reaches the customer in the island, the price goes up by 20-30 per cent on account of freight charges, handling charges, octroi and port charges.

“If the mainland is finding it hard to cope, we are facing a harsher crisis out here,” says Gouranga Majhi, general secretary, All India Kisan Sabha, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is difficult even for a middle class family to work its budget around the stretched prices, with 70 per cent of the wages going towards food items.

“Each time the price goes up in the mainland, we know that here in the islands we will have to pay out much more,” says Sanjay Chaudhary, general secretary of the Congress party in the Andamans. “We are used to higher prices and our threshold of tolerance is pretty high, but now we are being pushed beyond limits,” he says. Mr. Majhi says there is some vegetable production in the Northern and Middle islands, but it is on such a low scale that they are unable to supply to the other areas. The only solution is to increase the internal productivity. In some islands vast fields growing paddy and vegetables were submerged during the tsunami. While the farmers were given compensation, the land – their only source of livelihood – is no longer useful and production has stopped completely.

Climbing prices of construction materials have also put a spoke in the wheel of tsunami rehabilitation work. When the project began in mid-2006, the price of steel was Rs. 26 a kilo and the price of cement, Rs. 190 a bag. Central Public Works Department officials say the current price of steel is Rs. 52 a kilo and cement Rs. 325 a bag.

Veda Manickam, who was ex-Municipal chairman in the Bamboo Flat, says a typical meal used to consist of rice, dal, potato and fish, but since the prices of all those commodities have risen, the average meal has become sparser and less nutritious.

“We did not think the prices of fish, which we get locally, would go up, but they have. Where are we going to find the money for a decent meal, send the children to school and save to go home to the mainland, I have no clue,” he says.

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