NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 12 Government's Role

Q1.

Onions are an important part of the cuisine in most parts of India. In some seasons, the supply of onions comes down in the market. What do you think happens to the price of onions when this happens?

Answer

The price rises, and often very sharply.

Supply of onions in the market falls
Demand stays almost the same — nearly every kitchen in India needs onions
→ many buyers chase few onions
→ buyers offer more rather than go without
→ the price shoots up

Why the rise is unusually steep for onions in particular:

Demand hardly falls when the price rises. A family that cooks with onions daily will pay ₹60 a kilo rather than change how it cooks — it will simply buy a little less.
Supply cannot be increased quickly. A crop takes months to grow; you cannot manufacture onions the week they run short.
Onions do not keep well. Storing them for months means losses to rot and sprouting, so stocks are limited.
Some traders may hold back stock hoping for still higher prices, which makes the shortage worse.

Why it happens: this is the guava story in reverse. There, too many guavas at too high a price left the cart full. Here, too few onions with unchanged demand leave the price climbing until enough buyers drop out for the small supply to go round.

Q2.

What will happen if the people supplying onions do not bring the required quantities to the market? What do you think the government should do in this situation?

Answer

What will happen.

Prices rise steeply and stay high; poorer households have to cut onions out of their meals altogether.
Some sellers hoard — hold back stock deliberately — because they expect a still higher price tomorrow. That makes the shortage sharper than the crop failure alone would have done.
Adulterated, rotten or undersized onions get sold at good prices, because buyers have no choice.
Restaurants, dhabas and street-food sellers see their costs jump, so the price of everything they cook rises too.
Farmers who do have onions gain — but only those who kept some stock; the ones whose crop failed gain nothing.

What the government should do. The chapter's principle is that the government “monitors the interaction between consumers and producers, and fair determination of price”. Applied to onions:

Step	What it does
Release its own buffer stock into the market	Adds supply immediately and pulls the price down
Fix a maximum price (an upper limit) on onions, as it does for life-saving drugs	Stops sellers from charging whatever they like — but must be done carefully, because a limit set too low leaves producers with “no motivation to produce”
Set stock limits and act against hoarding	Forces held-back onions into the market
Import onions from other countries	Uses the international market to fill the gap at home
Sell onions directly through fair-price outlets and co-operative vans	Guarantees at least some onions at a fixed rate to ordinary households
Restrict exports for a while	Keeps the home market supplied first
Longer term: build cold storage and better warehouses; support farmers with a minimum price in good years	Fewer onions rot, so the shortage is smaller next time — and farmers do not stop growing them after a year of low prices

Tip: a complete answer must protect both sides. The consumer needs affordable onions this month; the farmer needs a price worth growing them for next year. Protect only one and the problem returns.

NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 12 Government's Role — LET'S EXPLORE