As the Enforcement Directorate continues to question Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, the Congress party has launched an attack against the Modi govt. The party have organised several protests against the govt making various allegation. One of the subjects they have chosen to target the union govt is the inflation and price rise.
As part of this campaign, Rahul Gandhi has been making allegations of price rise in recent times. On August 10th, he posted a comment on Facebook alleging that prices of pulses have gone up by 20% in the last 15 days. Calling the Modi govt ‘Tanashah’, Rahul Gandhi said that govt is denying inflation while prices have risen sharply.
The Congress MP claimed that prices of various pluses like Urad, Moong, Arhar, Masoor and Channa have gone up by 10-25% in the last 15 days.
While price rise is indeed a matter of grave concern for common people, the claims made by Rahul Gandhi are not correct. The prices of food products did go up in recent past, but they have not gone up by the extent the Congress leader is claiming. Data shows that none of pulse products have become costlier by 10-20% in the last 15 days, as Rahul Gandhi is saying.
In fact, in the period from 28 July to 12 August, prices of pulses have gone up by 1-4%, not 10-25% as claimed by Rahul Gandhi. Data of retail prices for the period shows that prices of Channa, Moong and Urad have gone up by 1.3-1.5% in last 15 days, while the prices of Arhar and Urad increased by 3.3-3.9% in the same period.
Therefore, the claim of Rahul Gandhi that prices of pulses increased by 20% in the last 15% is completely false and not based on facts.
Moreover, after the price rises a few years ago, the prices of pulses have remained stable in the last year, thanks to various preventive measures taken by the govt. The prices have remained almost unchanged, with minor upward and downward changes on a month-to-month basis.
The CPI inflation rate for pulses was (-) 0.42% in May, 2022, (-)1.02% in June, 2022 and 0.18% in July, 2022. The union govt has asked the states and UTs to enforce stock disclosure under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 for some products like Arhar, to prevent hoarding by traders.
Not just pulses, prices of several other food products are now stable, after increases in 2-4 years ago.
Earlier on August 2, Rahul Gandhi had posted a tweet saying that prices of several commodities like fuel, salt, Arhar, edible, tea etc have increased by 33-113% in the last 3 years. While these rates of increase in 2022 over 2019 are largely correct, the Congress leader missed a very important aspect.
The prices of these commodities have been largely stable in the last one year, while the prices had gone up sharply in 2019 and 2020. It is notable that those periods mark the global economic slowdown and then the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to massive disruptions in the supply chain caused by the pandemic, prices of most commodities had gone up in the last two years.
But for last one year, the prices have stabilised, and saw only marginal increase in prices for most products, while the prices of some commodities have come down in the recent months.
In fact, prices of almost all essential commodities have come down in the last few months, including pulses and edibles, two categories that had seen the maximum price rise. Prices of mustard oil, vanaspati, soybean oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, channa dal, moong dal, tea, masoor dal, potato, tomato, onion etc have come down in the last few months.
Here is the price summary of essential items in recent times:
1. Compared to last month, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹5), Vanaspati (-₹7), Soybean Oil (-₹7), Sunflower Oil (-₹4), Palm Oil (-₹6), Tomato (-₹9).
2. Compared to last 2 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹10), Vanaspati (-₹13), Soybean (-₹12), Sunflower Oil (-₹12), Palm Oil (-₹18), Tomato (-₹18), Channa & Moong Dal (-₹2).
3. Compared to last 3 months, (last quarter) dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹14), Vanaspati (-₹10), Soybean (-₹13), Sunflower Oil (-₹12), Palm Oil (-₹23), Tea (-₹4), Tomato (-₹4), Channa Dal (-₹3), Moong Dal (-₹2).
4. Compared to last 4 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹13), Vanaspati (-₹3), Soybean Oil (-₹5), Sunflower Oil (-₹4), Palm Oil (-₹12), Channa Dal (-₹2).
5. Compared to last 5 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹18), Soybean Oil (-₹2), Palm Oil (-₹13), Gram Dal (-₹3), Moong & Masoor Dal (-₹2), Onion (-₹9).
6. Compared to last 6 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹18), Channa Dal (-₹3), Onion (-₹10), Tea (-₹4).
7. Compared to last 7 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹10), Onion (-₹8), Tomato (-₹4).
8. Compared to last 8 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹16), Channa Dal (-₹4), Urad Dal (-₹2), Onion (-₹10), Tomato (-₹28).
9. Compared to last 9 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹14), Channa Dal (-₹5), Moong Dal (-₹2), Onion (-₹16), Tomato (-₹22).
10. Compared to last 10 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹12), Gram Dal (-₹4), Onion (-₹9), Tomato (-₹3).
11. Compared to last 11 months, dip in the prices of Mustard Oil (-₹5), Gram Dal (-₹4), Onion (-₹3).
12. Compared to last year, dip in the prices of Gram Dal (-₹4), Onion (-₹5)
13. Compared to last 2 years, dip in the prices of Potato (-₹4), Potato (-₹14), Moong Dal (-₹2)
As prices of several items have either come down or remained stable in the last one year, Rahul Gandhi cleverly picked data for last for the period 2019-2022, which included the Covid-19 period during which everything had gone costlier by a great extent.