Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury criticises the Center in Lok Sabha for raising prices for fodder.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a Congress leader, criticised the Centre on Tuesday for the rise in fodder inflation. He said that prices for animal feed are going up because the Centre is run by a government that plays politics by keeping the cow in the front.
Chowdhury brought up the issue during Zero Hour in Lok Sabha. He said that the prices of fodder have gone up by 27%.
“Jo sarkaar gaay ko saamne rakhkar siyaasat karatee hai us sarkaar ke zamaane mein dekhiye aaj pashu aahaar ke is tareeke se daamon mein ijaapha ho raha hai. “The prices of fodder and feed are going up in this way because the government does politics by keeping the cow in front,” Chowdhury said, citing inflation rates for fodder and feed.
Chowdhury brought up the issue a few days after The Indian Express reported that the annual rate of fodder inflation based on the all-India Wholesale Price Index (WPI) rose to 27.66% in November of this year.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry released WPI data on December 14, 2022, which showed that the index value for fodder was 225.7 in November of this year. This was a 27.66% increase from the same month last year (176.8).
In October of this year, fodder inflation was 27.31%, while it was only 0.688% in November of last year.
Not only did the prices of fodder go up, but so did the prices of feed. A subgroup of the WPI called “Manufacture of prepared animal feeds” saw inflation rise to 7.76% in November. This was up from 3.38% in October and 14.86% last year.
The “Manufacture of prepared animal feeds” subgroup has a weight of 0.35630 in the WPI. It has five items: Gola and similar Cattle Feed, Rice Bran Extract, Soya preparations without oil, Cotton Seed Oil Cake, and Mustard Oil Cake. In this subgroup, “Rice Bran Extract” had the highest inflation rate (36.28%), followed by “Gola and similar cattle feed” (11.59%) and “Cotton seed oil cake” (6.47 per cent). Two other things, though, had negative inflation rates: soya preparations without oil (-9.96%) and mustard oil cake (-0.1%). (-25.09).
In November 2022, fodder inflation was the highest it had been since June 2013, when it reached a record high of 29.70%.
Inflation for fodder and feed has been going up, but inflation for the whole WPI has been going down in recent months. In recent months, the overall WPI inflation has been going down. In November, it was 5.85%, which was the lowest in the last 21 months. On the other hand, fodder inflation has been going up since December 2021 and has been hovering around 20% for the last 10 months.
The Indian Express said in October of this year that fodder inflation had reached a nine-year high of 25.54 percent in August, making life hard for rural families. Prices for feed have also been talked about in the Parliament.
