Onion price has rocketed to Tk 50 per KG, three times what it was weeks back, two times the past week's. Tills cannot be the doing of market forces alone. This suspicion got a fillip by the spurt in salt price which followed the onion nightmare by a day or two. Those that sought to shoot the salt price up through the mechanism of rumours and scare — nothing to do with the supply situation — evidently got their cue from the mad-onlon epidemic. The profiteers — retailers mostly of salt — couldn't carry the trick far enough. People smelt rat.

We have at least two lessons here. An unsuspected factor has contributed to the very improbable thing that fell on us out of nowhere. People's faith in what the government says or does is the most powerful weapon to squash any artificial and manipulative move to push up the prices. One may ask very cogently, why is the government now running after corrective measures when It Is its business to know the production picture of onion and other items behind the daily menu and prepare the people with their previews. Failure of the government to share with the people what it knew of the onion situation has been bad enough but to have not known it before the disaster struck is far worse.

The second lesson we have here Is the inconceivable absence of buyers' resistance to price spirals. This resistance — a main factor in keeping the operation of market forces healthy — could come in three forms. First, the individual buyer's resistance both because he or she cannot afford the tripped up price or is not convinced why the high price should be accepted and paid. Resistance should also come as the result of activists working in groups. Third, the government, through the media, can very well ask the people very plainly — don't pay more. In the absence of all three, the buyers, at all level, have for years been paying more than the MRP printed on the label of packaged consumables.

Onion price will come down as a matter of course — in a matter of weeks. But the vulnerability of the price mechanism, the helplessness of both society and government in the face of its convulsions — as shown by the onion and salt nightmare has been traumatic. Both society and government must learn their lessons from it. Specially the latter because it is in charge. In the meantime, how about a deep and competent probe into this unparallelled scandal? And the government begin its transparency exercise with the publication of the findings. Cannot actions follow the findings?