Kolkata:
West Bengal is in the grip of a potato crisis. After prices soared to Rs 40 rupees a kg last week, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pegged the price of the tuber at Rs 13 a kilo. The net result? The humble potato vanished from the markets across Kolkata.
The government today stepped in to supply potato to markets, but demand far outstripped supply and potato mostly stayed out of sight.
In south Kolkata's Lake Market, you can get anything you want - cucumber, carrots, brinjals, parmals as well as lemon, karela and papaya. But what you cannot get is the humble potato. Shops selling potatoes were shut in the evening. The potato sellers did not even come to open their shops because of lack of supplies.
"Potatoes came in the morning. Each shop got some 5 to 6 sacks. After the potatoes were sold out, they shut shops and left. Everything was over by 12 noon," said a vegetable seller.
"I want to buy but they are nowhere to be found in the market. I can't see anywhere. All the shops are shut," said a customer.
But shopkeepers at Park Circus market were luckier. Some of them got 200 kg of potato in the evening that went real fast at Ms Banerjee's stipulated price of Rs 13 a kg. And that made people here happy. "She is doing a good thing for the public. We are at least getting some potato, even if we have to line up. We are at least getting it cheap. Yesterday, I bought it at 40 rupees a kilo," said Shabnam Faraz, a housewife.
One of the many unfortunate outcomes of the potato crisis is that Alibaba, a biryani maker which has 19 outlets across the city, has left the potato out of the dish leaving biryani lovers upset. "This is terrible. There is no life left in biryani. If I had known there was no potato in it, I'd have ordered something else," said Md Imtiaz.
Hard times for Kolkata's potato eaters indeed!