The Hynñiewtrep Youths Council (HYC) has called for large scale state government intervention to manage the effects of inflation, which are hitting the poorest of Meghalaya the hardest.
In a missive to the Deputy Chief Minister today, the pressure group said that nothing has come out of the Deputy CM’s apparent promise in May that the state government would take a call on the sharp rise in the price of LPG and other essential commodities.
The HYC said that the people of the state were only just beginning to recover from the disruptions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic when they were hit by the effects of skyrocketing inflation, a problem that the whole world is experiencing.
To mitigate these issues, the HYC has called for the creation of a ‘Price Monitoring Agency’ under the Department of Consumer Affairs, which will monitor the prices of selected essential commodities and provide feedback so that preventive measures can be taken prevent a shortfall in supply. This agency can also provide temporary relief through “commodity-specific market intervention schemes” in times of shortages to keep prices under control.
It also called for a dedicated ‘Price Stabilisation Fund’ with a large enough corpus to tackle inflation in the interest of consumers. The HYC also demanded that hoarding and black market activities be tackled stringently, that the state government request the Centre to provide more subsidised LPG cylinders, that taxes on petrol, diesel and LPG be “reduced considerably”, that GST on food products and other essentials be reduced or waived entirely and that the transport or sale of essentials produced within Meghalaya to other states or overseas by banned.
