NEW DELHI: If you were to ask any random aam aadmi anywhere in India what is the single biggest failing of the UPA , the answer would be – price rise . This is so because the most important items of family spending – food items – have relentlessly risen for the past several years despite repeated promises to bring them down by the economic mandarins and policy wonks that run the country’s economy. Poorer families have had to stop eating various foods in order to save crumbling family budgets.Between 2004 and 2013 food prices in general rose by 157%. But when you get into the nuts and bolts the real pain becomes starkly clear. India is the second largest producer of vegetables in the world. Yet chronic supply shortages coupled with serial hoarding has led vegetable prices to shoot up by a deadly 350% in that period.Onion prices have increased by an incredible 521% since 2004. And it’s not a smooth even rise. There were times when onion prices doubled, even tripled within weeks and then subsided after a few weeks of rampage. This happened in the winter of 2010-11. And it is happening again now with onion prices touching Rs 70-80 levels in most parts of the country.This has happened with other key staples also like potatoes. In the second half of 2009 potato prices zoomed up by almost 100% and it was only in January 2010 that the levels came down. Other vegetables have followed their own mad ways – brinjal for instance is 311% costlier now than in 2004, and prices of the lowly cabbage have risen by a jaw dropping 714%. Various vegetable prices are in fact at all time highs.The hike in vegetable prices hit poorer families especially hard because earlier, starting 2006, another staple of families had been knocked out of thalis. This was pulses, the single biggest source of protein in largely vegetarian India. Their prices rose steadily 2005 onwards and by 2010 they had more than doubled. Then again they increased in 2012 and reached an all time high in September last year. There has been a slight decline since then but even then prices are 123% higher than 2004.What about other key food items? Milk prices have increased by 119%. Egg prices have gone up by 124%. Spices and condiments have increased by 119%. Sugar has increased by 106%. Even salt, an essential of most cooked food has increased by 85% in the past decade.Prices of the two staple cereals of India, rice and wheat, have increased by 137% and 117%, respectively. Remember, India has seen record harvests for a series of years and except for 2004 and 2009, monsoons have been good generally. So mass produced crops like wheat and rice which demand high water inputs have not been subject to the usual weather depression. Even fruit prices have increased by 95% despite bumper crops of many popular fruits like bananas, mangoes, oranges and papaya.These are the wholesale prices. What the aam aadmi gets at the local shop has more jacked up prices. But if the wholesale prices have risen so dramatically, imagine the real prices you pay for.Strangely, principal political parties gearing up for elections next year seem to be indifferent to this continuing decimation of family budgets. It will be a very angry voter that they will face at the hustings.