Karnataka - Bangalore

Prices hit a new high this season

BANGALORE: This year’s Dasara and Ramzan have come at a time when the prices of essential commodities have reached an all-time high. The month of October is bound to burn a deep hole in all middle-class pockets.

“This is a month of festivals with Dasara and Deepavali coming in October, and naturally, our expenditure goes up. With the exorbitant rise in prices of all essential commodities, it has become all the more difficult to celebrate the festival,” says Shanmuganath M.R., who works for a private company and lives in Vijayanagar.

Prices of flowers, vegetables and fruits have gone up considerably. Vegetable prices have witnessed over 100 per cent hike during the last one month. Marigold and chrysanthemums are the two varieties of flowers for the celebrations and they have not arrived in right quantity to markets this time, says Rajesh, a flower vendor. This has pushed up prices of flowers.

Retail and wholesale vegetable and flower merchants attributed shortage and price hike to heavy rains that lashed the State in August-end and September first week. Large quantities of standing crops were lost during the rains and it will take at least two months for the supplies to stabilise, they say.

Mutton too has become dearer. What cost Rs. 170-180 a kg a few months ago now costs about Rs. 220 a kg, says Anees Ahmed, a mutton stall owner in Kamakshipalya. Dressed chicken (broiler), which used to cost Rs. 65 to Rs. 70 a kg, now costs not less than Rs. 100 a kg while the country chicken costs Rs. 140 a kg. “Still, we have to celebrate the festival and we have compromised on the quantity of meat used,” says Ayesha Khannum, a homemaker.

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