Mad about onions

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Editor's note: On a nippy November morning, scores of groggy people queue up outside a Safal grocery store in eastern Delhi’s Patparganj residential area, well before the truck arrives with vegetables and supplies. It is barely dawn, the street lights are on, the shutter of the shop—one of the 400+ Safal retail outlets in National Capital Region—is still down, and conversations are peppered with yawns. The topic of discussion? Onions. And the 3x surge in their prices, of course. When the truck finally arrives, and the shutter opens, people throng the shelf that has onions. But as the shop owner puts up the price, half the people turn away. Several others start arguing.  “How can the price be Rs 56 a kg this morning when it sold for Rs 24 till last evening?” they ask. The shop owner doesn’t have a satisfactory answer. Some buy. Many others leave. The price of onions has continued to rise since and is flirting with the psychological barrier of Rs 100/kg in Delhi’s retail markets. In many other parts of India, onion is selling for Rs …