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Price rise at source, transportation bottlenecks and inadequate storage facilities are the main causes of the rising prices of vegetables and other essentials in the mountainous northeastern states.


The capitals of the northeastern states via Guwahati are 1,000 km to 1,700 km from Kolkata by road, and 2,000 km to 2,650 km from Delhi while the distance between the northeastern states and Kolkata via Bangladesh on an average is 600 km to 800 km.

There is only a narrow land corridor to the northeastern region through Assam and West Bengal, but this route passes through hilly terrain with steep gradients and multiple hairpin bends, making plying of vehicles, especially loaded trucks, very difficult and time consuming.

Of the eight northeastern states, Assam's main city of Guwahati (adjoining capital Dispur), Tripura capital Agartala and Arunachal Pradesh's Naharlagun (adjacent to capital city Itanagar) are now connected with the railway network.

The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is now laying new railway tracks to connect the capital cities of three more northeastern states - Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland.

Economists, experts, traders and administrators identified price rise at source, transportation problems, inadequate storage facilities, heavy dependence for the essentials on the states of other regions of India as the main causes of price rise of vegetables, fish and other essentials in the northeast.

Sujit Roy, member of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and India-Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Tripura Chapter), said that if the prices of essentials and other goods increased at the source, it automatically hit the northeast.

"Transportation is a big issue in the mountainous areas. However, with the gradual extension of the railway line the transportation bottlenecks are being gradually eased in the region," Roy, who is also the Secretary of the All Tripura Merchants Association, told IANS.

However, traders in Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Meghalaya observed that as railway connectivity has not reached every capital city and districts of the states, transportation of essentials, transport fuel, vegetables and food grains are fully dependent on the roads, which is very problematic, expensive and time consuming.

"During the four month long monsoon period (June to September), transportation of essentials, various commodities and transport fuel becomes a severe problem," Imphal based trader Tarunjit Singh told IANS.

He said that adequate storage facilities with all the required provisions must be set up in all the northeastern states specially in the remote and far-flung places to meet the shortage of essentials, food grains and transport fuel as and when the situation dictates.

Binoy Sangma, a retired government employee in Shillong, said that the vicious cycle of rising fuel prices results in the soaring prices of essential commodities.

Some vegetables which earlier used to cost Rs 30 per kg, today cost Rs 120 per kg. Fruits, specially those coming from outside the northeastern region, are only for the affluent people as the poor can no longer afford to buy them, he added.

Sangma said that it is clear that the central government is not a poor-friendly government.

"The government is investing huge amounts of public money on endless glamorous projects while not caring for the economic condition of a large section of the common people, who can no longer afford even two square meals a day," he said.

Tripura University (Central varsity) professor Salim Shah said that the government's claims and the ground reality on the economy are hugely dissimilar.

"The data of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the government's claims and statistics have no similarity. Hence there is an economic crisis in the country and the government's claim on the growth rate is not correct," he told IANS.

Shah said that by introducing GST on new items, the government is collecting funds from the people, putting an economic burden on the common man.

During August, India's unemployment rate surged to a one-year high of 8.3 per cent as employment sequentially fell by 2 million to 394.6 million.

"The increase in the unemployment rate does not support the government's claim of growth rate. It can be termed a jobless growth. When in other countries, the prices of petrol and diesel are going down, these are constantly rising in India. The increase in the prices of transport fuels causes a cumulative effect in all sectors," the economist said.

Tripura Chambers of Commerce and Industry President M. L. Debnath said that if the essentials, various goods and machinery were ferried from different parts of India to the mountainous northeastern states using Bangladeshi ports and surface roads, it would save time and transportation costs.

The Chittagong international sea port in Bangladesh is 75 km from southern Tripura and the northeastern states can get access to the sea port for transportation of many items, Debnath told IANS.