First it was oil, then onions, potatoes and salt for a brief spell. As reports speak of panic-ridden governments banning exports, lifting import restrictions and cracking on hoarders, market watchers say only effective regulation and tabs on market trends can keep things under control.

Despite the states' subsidising the sale of onions and nabbing more than 100 traders for hoarding in different parts of the country, prices are still reigning at three to four times the cost four months ago.

Even as government outlets in the metros and other cities are selling onions upto Rs 20 per kg per week to a family, prices in the open market continue to range between Rs 30 and Rs 60 across the country.

Most of the states have subsidised the sale of onions, with Delhi alone subsidising upto50 tonnes daily, says K Sethuraman, commissioner, food and civil supplies.

Even as sethuraman blames the price rise on unseasonal rain and failed crops, in Jaipur tonnes of onions and potatoes were recovered from stockists as de-hoarding operations were taken up.

In Calcutta, police nabbed 67 people for hoarding essential commodities while 15 quintals of mustard oil was confiscated and sold to consumers through the public distribution system. Some 7,000 tonnes of palmolein is being made available in pouches and barrels, says Kalimuddin Shams, West Bengal's minister for food and civil supplies.

The southern states of Andhra and Tamil Nadu have as a precautionary measure sought a share from the import of onions and are monitoring the market to check the situation from slipping out of hand, say officials.

But "too meagre, too little," is what Kamal Kabra, of the Indian Institute of Public Administration says of the government's recent crack down on hoarders and seeking respite in imports of essentialcommodities.

Kabra attributes the crisis to hoarding and lax attitude on the part of the authorities in monitoring the movement of commodities and stepping in when the supplies began to trickle rather than act when they just disappeared. The decision for imports, he says, could also have been taken then. It would also not have raised prices in the international market, as now, when other nations have started buying because of shortfall in India.

Even as Sethuraman holds a failed crop solely responsible for the shortage saying hoarding of perishables is not possible, Kabra notes that traders are the only lobby that appears to have benefited in the current situation.

A spokesman of the Rajasthan Jan Parishad, an NGO, which has opened 40 outlets in the pink city to provide commodities at a reasonable price, said "when we can procure vegetables and sell at very cheap rates, how come the government machinery fails?"

Similarly, Chhaya Arora, says she is baffled to see frozen shredded packaged onionsselling in West delhi for Rs 35 per kg when the rates in the open market were ruling at Rs 60.

For a 15 per cent shortage of crop production a hike of 300 per cent and more is simply unrealistic and indicates the hand of middlemen and traders, who have been manipulating the prices, says Kabra.

Echoing him, environmentalist Vandana Shiva says that weather is "a" not "the" factor that has led to this kind of a price rise. Crops have failed on earlier occasions too, but never has the effect been so profound.

Besides, what role did the `rain gods' play in jacking the prices of edible oils and salt, she asks.

Shiva vehemently attributes the current scenario to liberalisation policies adopted by successive union governments since 1991 in adapting to globalisation.

"Free trade literally means freedom for traders. Traders free of social control will maximise profits, they will hoard, they will adulterate and sell unsafe food," says Shiva noting that price rise is a result of what these policies of openingup or removal of state regulation over commodities were meant to be.

Kabra too attributes the exorbitant rise in price of oil to the `erroneous' policy of first banning the sale of mustard oil following which the production simply came down. As the supplies started thinning, the prices spiralled to reach Rs 80 per litre in the capital at the time of diwali.

Calling for a reform of the reforms suggested by world bank in 1991 to tune indian agriculture in keeping with the world markets, Shiva says those policies are meant only to set Indian prices at parity with the world prices that are out of reach of millions.

But prices for agricultural produce is going down which is hitting the growers hard. The policies suggested by the World Bank like doing away with PDS, abolishing futures trading, abolishing the Essential Commodities Act are a clear recipe for hoarding and profiteering, says Shiva arguing that food security for all the one billion people in the country can only be assured if public policies havea say in market movements. Even in countries like Bangladesh there is a separate directorate which keeps keeps district wise information on stocks of essential commodities held even by private traders, says Kabra.