With onion, bustle and cheer return to Lasalgaon

Diwali is more than a month away, but for the farmers of Lasalgaon in Maharashtra, touted as Asia's largest onion market, the sparkle has already arrived.

On Wednesday morning, as soon as bidding opened at the Lasalgaon market, farmers took their onion crop to the market yard, accompanied by a music band. They were welcomed with the distribution of sweets and bursting of crackers.

By noon, about 1,000 tonnes of onion had arrived in the market, swelling to to about 12,000 tonnes by evening. Farmers got Rs 1,212 for every 100 kg of onions.

The Centre lifted the ban on onion exports on Tuesday, a move that followed intense pressure from farmers and political parties, particularly from Maharashtra. The Centre's decision was taken after prices had stabilised. It has fixed a floor price of $ 475 a tonne for export (about Rs 23,000).

For the last 12 days, farmers across the country had launched a country-wide agitation against the ban. They had stopped bringing their produce to the market.

On September 9, the Centre decided to ban onion exports after the retail price rose by more than Rs 10 a kg in less than three months in some cities because of the delayed harvest of the kharif crop.

Mr Babasahebh Gujar, a farmer from neighbouring Niphad, who sold about 2.5 tonnes of onion today told Business Line that he could have brought in 3.5 tonnes, but about a tonne of onions got damaged due to the agitation.

In spite of the loss, Mr Gujar is in good sprits as he believes the lifting of the ban is a great victory for the farmers. “The farmers are happy that a wrong decision has been overturned. Farmers did not have to come on the streets, they simply stopped supplying onions. Sarkar ko jhukna pada kisan ke samne (the Government had to bend to farmers' will), he said.

Mr Trimbak Charanke, also a farmer from the same region, said the Government was giving a subsidy on fertilisers and for storage facilities for onions because it “wants us to keep on producing a bumper crop so that the city dwellers can buy our produce cheap. Now, we are going to demand that we will supply the onions to the cities at prices decided by us and not the middlemen,” he said.

Mr Jaidutt Holkar, Chairman of the Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Market Committee, said had the farmers not agitated against the export ban, the prices would have dropped to Rs 400 per 100 kg, which would have been disastrous for the farmers. Today they are hovering at Rs 1,200, where marginal profit is possible, he said.

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