A rice tycoon has become a clout chaser, posting ostentatiously on social media about his extravagance ad nauseam. He has been TikToking his newly acquired Rolls-Royce to boost his ego and online visibility. What he does with his own money should not be anyone else’s concern, one can argue. This argument is not without some merit. But the large-scale rice millers are making a vulgar display of their wealth in this manner while paddy cultivators, stuck neck-deep in debt, are mortgaging their household goods, jewellery and agricultural equipment to make ends meet, and the public is complaining of unconscionably high prices of rice. This shows that there is something terribly wrong with the mechanisms in place to safeguard the interests of rice growers and consumers; it has also given the lie to the big-time millers’ oft-repeated claim that they are just keeping their heads above water, and they are justified in increasing the prices of rice from time to time.
Powerful rice millers with huge slush funds are known to have politicians and political parties in their pocket. Successive governments have benefited from their largesse and protected their interests at the expense of the public. Those who elected Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, as President, expected him to get tough with the unscrupulous millers notorious for their exploitative practices, but he lacked the courage to take them on. Instead of looking after the interests of the public, he ordered the Consumer Affairs Authority to stop searching for hoarded paddy in some wealthy millers’ sprawling warehouses, thus giving the rice tycoon fraternity carte blanche to manipulate paddy and rice markets. The predecessors of the failed Gotabaya regime did likewise. A wag says that when money talks even dyed-in-the-wool Marxists listen.
In 2024, the disillusioned electors overwhelmingly voted for the NPP led by the JVP, which claims to espouse Marxism, expecting the traders’ cartels, including that of millers to be tamed as a national priority. But the ‘Marxists’ signal left and turn right just like the tuk-tuks on Sri Lankan roads, and powerful millers continue to do as they please.
A few months into office, during a meeting with a group of powerful millers on rice shortages and high prices, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake created a bit of drama, banging as he did a clenched fist on his desk. Everybody thought he had put his foot down at last and was about to read the rice millers the riot act, asking them to comply with the legally set price ceiling for rice. But his theatrics ended in anticlimax; he increased the prices of rice by Rs. 10 a kilo much to the glee of the millers, who laughed all the way to the bank for the umpteenth time.
The politically connected millers are free to create shortages of rice and jack up prices, making the government import rice and saturate the market close to the commencement of paddy harvesting so that they can buy paddy at very low prices; thereafter they hoard paddy and increase the prices of rice. Huge stocks of imported rice, which does not suit the Sri Lankan palate, rot in government warehouses and are eventually sold as animal feed. Consumers and farmers are without anyone to turn to. The large-scale millers determine the prices of paddy and rice by keeping markets uncompetitive.
The self-proclaimed messiahs in the Opposition shed copious tears for paddy cultivators and rice consumers, vowing to safeguard their interests in case of being voted into power, but they also have a history of pandering to the whims and fancies of the wealthy millers, who generously bankroll election campaigns. The laws in place to regulate campaign finance lack strong teeth and politicians and their financiers drive a coach and horses through them.
One of the campaign promises of the incumbent government was to make Japanese hatchbacks freely available at Rs. 2 million each for the benefit of the public, but vehicle prices have gone into the stratosphere and even motorcycles and trishaws are beyond their reach. The ordinary people who are struggling to dull the pangs of hunger due to the high prices of rice have had to settle for watching the viral videos of the miller’s Rolls-Royce.
