$20 million APPLES?

Read this slow and with emphasis on each word - $20 million worth APPLES? Really?

Well, since the creation of the planet, apples have been a constant source of trouble for the mankind but I never expected them to be a trouble of $20 million!

Today, while in discussion with someone, I was told that our country imported apples worth $20 million in the past year.

I am no expert on the subject matter but there is something I know for sure - India produces apples and that too quite a many varieties of them. Even if there was some decrease in the quantity of apples produced in the last year, but that doesn’t mean that we need to import them! Like for people wit their own vegetable gardens, do they buy the vegetables from the market when they grow them? Yes at times you get only 2 potatoes when you expected or needed 4 but that is when you need to act smart and wait a little and not just rush and buy more.

Apples have been very important to all humans.. For all I know, apple was the very reason for the bringing of the human species… apple was the thing to put Snow White to eternal sleep… Red Riding Hood carried apples for her grandmother when the wolf followed her... apple was the symbol between linking a vampire to human… but are apples this important that people cant live without these?

I simply mean that if people don’t eat apples one season, would anything change on Earth?

I mean, you wont believe that I don’t have much problem with the $20 million but most of my concern is APPLES! The money doesn’t concern me because common that is a good thing when you spend on food to feed the people but it should be a kind of food that the population cant live without. And not APPLES.

All this money would have been so useful had it been spent on to improve or enhance something in our own country rather than paying for import… I mean just imagine this money, if hadnt been used for import, could have been the very reason for increasing the value of rupee in the international market; atleast by some means.

But NO! We needed APPLES!

I don’t get a simple thing - less apples means that the price of apples will rise. Which further means that only the selected fortunate section of the society will be able to buy and eat them… Now if you buy apples from import for $20 million and with rupee degrading so much, how much will a dozen of these imported apples would cost? And how exactly will an ordinary person buy it?

As a result, all these apples will probably be kept in cold storage to be fed to us (again) in the next(upcoming) apple season!

A remedy that I could see is rationing the resources. Apples for all I know are never a necessity! And if they are given to people in rationed quantity, I am sure it wont hurt anyone. And why just apples? Rationing on a number of items will itself give a little stability to the economy.

But if you really ask me, I am totally speechless on the topic and befuddled about what exactly are the policy makers of this country are thinking… All I can really do is to urge them to see the real potential of this country and use that potential for the upliftment of the country and of its people than of a few selected people.