Price to pinch pocket
Middle-class families to be worst hit by Aavin price hike
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-10-26 06:17 GMT
Chennai: Saturday’s milk price hike has left homemakers, particularly those from the middle class and below, angry and worried. Mallika Chinnathambi, a homemaker from Adamabakkam, has two reasons to blame the CM who chose to hike the milk price at the first cabinet meet he chaired a few days into his tenure. First, her monthly grocery budget will take a hit. Second, as a tea drinker, she has to reduce the number of cups she drinks.
“My three-member family needs at least a litre and a half per day. Given the hike, my monthly milk budget will increase by Rs450 with which I can foot my monthly newspaper and cable TV bill,” Mallika says. “For a stress-prone middle class housewife like me, tea is the only easy and cheap refreshment available at home. So I take a lot of it throughout the day. I cannot afford it henceforth because if I reduce our milk consumption by half-a-litre a day I can save money for the monthly cable TV bill,” she added.
Accountant Punitha Ramachandran of Adyar adds, “For every bit of milk we reduce, we lose an equal volume in curds or buttermilk. A few rupees would have been fine, but '10 per litre is not acceptable by any standards.” Tea shops too could raise their prices. “Nearly a third of the price of a cup of tea is accounted for by the milk used. We increased the price of tea when private dairies hiked their prices recently. We are not directly affected. But what about shops that use Aavin milk which increased the price of tea earlier,” asks teashop owner Malaichamy of Eekaatuthangal.
“For a welfare state to increase the price of an essential commodity like milk by '10 overnight is too high and unacceptable,” said K.R. Shanmugam, director, Madras School of Economics.