Bhopal: In what must be some kind of a record, onion is selling at Rs 168 in Satna, a city in north Madhya Pradesh.
“The price of onion has broken the 23-year-old record. The highest price before this was in 1996 when it was sold at Rs 100 per kg”, Manas Mishra, a trader in the Lalta Chowk vegetable mandi, told this newspaper on Thursday.
The freshly harvested onion procured from Nasik in Maharashtra is sold at Rs 120 per kilo in the city. The MP stock is older, and his preferred to the fresh harvest.
MP is second largest onion producing state after Maharashtra in the country. The state has produced 37,21,610 metric tonnes of onion in the last Kharif season, or 17 per cent of the country’s total onion output.
In district headquarters of Indore, the financial capital of Madhya Pradesh, carrot has replaced onion in ‘poha’, the quintessential breakfast of people of the city. A plate of poha, made of flattened rice, sells at `10-15 per plate. “No dish on earth can replace poha,” a local said. In the MP capital of Bhopal, onions are being sold at `140 per kilo in the retail market. Onions have disappeared in the salad served in restaurants in different parts of MP. “Onion production in the current kharif in MP has been hit due to heavy rains, forcing the state to depend on Maharashtra to meet its onion needs currently”, an official said.
