EDITORIAL: News reports of a meeting of the so-called priorities departments approving an “online dashboard” to monitor prices would have made for a pleasant New Year’s gift if only they hadn’t appeared alongside headlines about another increase in fuel prices. Soon enough their monitoring will tell them that higher petrol and diesel prices are doing what they always do; driving up input cost and output prices across the board. How are they going to control cost-push inflation then? The priorities departments are actually six departments that have been clubbed together and placed on high priority for implementation of reforms. These include food security, agriculture, power, manpower, foreign investment and privatisation, information technology and exports. The prime minister has decided to chair weekly meetings of the dashboard himself, which ought to be reassuring, yet this system does come across as one which is limited to identifying problems as opposed to solving them. After all, it’s not as if the government hasn’t identified a whole host of problems already and failed to do much to solve them despite making all sorts of promises.

For example, the PM said that in addition to other things the dashboard would also play an effective role against hoarding and profiteering. But how exactly is it going to do that? For hasn’t the PM himself held all kinds of hoarders, profiteers and mafias responsible for the relentless inflation in some of the most important items of daily consumption and use, and time and again vowed to use all the might of the state to sort them out as well as prices? Yet, here we are, facing the same set of problems and hearing now of one more way the government is going to monitor prices. Granted, so far they have had the good sense to decide, at least in theory, to take provinces along. But, once again, since the centre has already struggled to work with provinces on just such matters, some more than others, perhaps they should also have taken the trouble to point out what delivery mechanisms they have put in place in case their monitoring flashes a red light. Surely, their main strategy is not crossing bridges as they get to them and solving problems as and when they confront them. Governments tend not to do such things, of course, because even when they are well intended the risk factor is just too high. And already this particular government is drawing flak for admitting that it came to the job unprepared although the prime minister is at pains to explain that he did not mean that when emphasized the need for incoming administrations to be briefed like on the US.

It is always a good idea to keep an eye on prices, but perhaps this idea of a dashboard needs to be developed a little further. If the government hasn’t been able to solve some of the problems it is meant to highlight so far, how is its input going to make much of a difference? Common people already know which items are more expensive than they should be. A good number of them also know when influences other than market forces are at play. What they really need to know is what the government is going to do to rid them of this unnecessary irritant. And now that half this administration’s tenure is over and inflation and mafias are still a problem, people’s patience is beginning to wear thin.

No doubt the government doesn’t need to be reminded that though unfairly high prices are unacceptable even when the going is good, they make life that much more miserable for the common man in times like the present; when there is a very visible downward drag on the economy. People are struggling with pay cuts, job losses and redundancies. They should not have to endure artificial inflation on top of everything just so hoarders can make extraordinary profits and expose a helpless government. The prime minister is very right to be concerned about the impact of such things on ordinary people’s lives. But he should be far more concerned about his administration’s utter inability to make small differences even where it could. This isn’t one of those areas where the government can escape blame by holding others responsible for the mess. It must not only take full responsibility but also show that it can make a difference. And it can do that only by making a difference that everyone can see.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021