The Last Cup

Coffee, which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes, as Alexander Pope put it ironically, opened quite a few eyes in India last week. For thousands of Indians, the coffeehouse is indispensable as a place to meet friends, transact business, talk, write, and incidentally, consume coffee, along with free ice water and cashew nuts. Politicians, wise or unwise, come and go, inflation gallops, the population spirals; but in the coffeehouse things remain the same--or at least they did until the great betrayal.

One day recently, Freelance Journalist Rajinder Kapoor dropped in at New Delhi's Coffeehouse, and lingered most of the morning. When he called for his bill, it totaled one rupee. He was astounded to find that the price of a cup of coffee had gone up from 45 to 50 paise, making two cups an even rupee (21-c-). Kapoor shouted the grim news to friends. "This is the last straw!" cried someone. "No, the last cup!" yelled someone else. Suddenly the customers were on their feet, protesting against the rising prices and calling for a boycott. Hastily finishing their coffee, customers marched out without paying.

Spreading Blame. The boycotters spent the rest of the morning picketing the cafe with signs, "Don't pay more today than you paid yesterday." Later, they pitched a tent on the sidewalk and started selling their own coffee at 25 paise a cup. Soon a Price Resistance Committee was organized to spread the boycott to other restaurants and shops. Among the joiners were Chidambaram Subramaniam, India's Food Minister, and Asoka Mehta, deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission.

The government, which blames middlemen and profiteers for India's severe food shortage and disastrously mounting prices, gave strong backing to the consumer boycott. But the problems are, in part, of the government's own making, for it has done little or nothing to rationalize India's largely state-controlled economy, or to provide incentives and modern methods for Indian agriculture.

Political Potatoes. The price-resistance movement swept through New Delhi. Housewives banded together to buy milk directly from producers. Brij Mohan, 38, a city councilor, started trucking in potatoes from the Punjab, sold them at artificially low prices. "These are political potatoes, which can appear only once a year," said a sour grocer watching Mohan with scales in hand dispensing potatoes on the sidewalk. But the campaign forced city merchants to lower their prices, and aroused public opinion as never before.

It also showed up all kinds of other complaints about life in Delhi. Newspapers were flooded with complaints. One letter writer denounced "this over-monumented and under-bathroomed city [where] in the hottest hours of the day there is no water for a shower and the electricity comes and goes as if monkeys were playing with the switches." Wrote another: "I am haunted by ghosts of corruption, high prices, high rents, adulteration in everything. There's no fresh bread to eat, no safe water to drink, no sugar to remove the unsavory taste from my mouth. The whole city is floating in a sea of sewage."

There was at least one consolation: the coffee at the Coffeehouse was once again selling for 45 paise a cup.

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