Onion anger mounts against embattled UPA government

The trebling of onion prices in India is not just making street hawker Kamlesh Gupta struggle to keep his children in school but is now threatening the stability of the Congress party-led coalition government.

The world faces soaring food inflation but in a country where 40 percent of the 1.2 billion population lives below the World Bank-estimated poverty line, it cuts deep.

"It's hard to survive," said Gupta, a 35-year-old street hawker at a vegetable market, a bazaar typical of the many in New Delhi where shoppers haggle with merchants as they seek bargains.

Glancing around to make sure no one overheard him, he whispered: "I'm telling you this in confidence: my wife has started to work as a domestic help for 2,200 rupees a month. Yet we don't have enough to live on."

"There have been price rises in the past, but it was never this bad before," said Gupta, who earns around 200 rupees a day and who has two small children in school. "We wish this government were never elected."

Image: Workers sort onions at the Azadpur wholesale vegetable market in New Delhi.

Text: Reuters

AP Images