India's onion crisis may end in election tears for government as prices rocket

India is set to import onions for the first time in two years as rising prices threaten to trigger a slump in support for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before next year's elections.

Prices of the vegetable have almost quadrupled in three months in New Delhi as the government struggles to tackle the highest inflation among the biggest emerging markets.

State-run trading company PEC last week sought overseas suppliers to deliver as much as 300,000 tons of onions, while the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) said the country may buy from China, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan. Politicians have won and lost elections in India over the cost of the key ingredient used to make spicy masala.

Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defeated after she suspended democracy from 1975 to 1977, swept back into power in 1980 by turning the price of onions into a populist rallying cry.

Waving garlands of onions at political gatherings, she assailed the incumbent government for its failure to control prices.

"The price of onions could become a political game-changer," said Satish Misra, an analyst at the Observer Research Foundation, a policy group based in New Delhi. "The government needs to check the prices of essential commodities, particularly onions, or it could harm its chances of winning the next elections."

Arvind Kumar Singh, who earns US$5 a day as a carpenter at a metro project in New Delhi, says the wage is too little to feed his family of five back home in Bihar. Now he can't even afford onions, a staple in Indian food.