Onion price is skyrocketing. At more than ₹100 per kilogram, its perhaps the most expensive common vegetable (Sidebar: Is tomato a vegetable or a fruit?). This is totally good news. Why?

Diwali is round the corner. People are looking at newer ways of showing their wealth — thanks to onion; they don’t have to do indecent things to do so. They could just cook things that use onion and when asked what’s on the menu, they could simply say they cooked onion this and onion that.

There’s a bigger angle to it — I even call it a conspiracy and master-plan. Here’s how:

The poor can’t use firecrackers (they are too expensive) and the rich won’t. It’s the middle class that smokes millions of rupees each year in the name of Diwali. This year, however, once again thanks to onion, they won’t have enough money to buy enough firecrackers (guns and butter, stupid!).

The end result? There will be no noise pollution, air pollution or global warming (Al Gore can relax!) due to Diwali. Lets take noise pollution alone — since they wont be noise pollution, government doesn’t have to install surveillance and enforcement against people that use firecrackers after civil hours. This saves some money to the government. Now, since there won’t be air pollution, the environmentalists do not have to work overtime. Without firecrackers, the firemen can go home. With fewer fire accidents, the doctors and nurses can go home.

All of these are likely to save the exchequer some money — and combined, they even have the potential to narrow the budget deficit, return rupee to normal and help the government get a good rating on their year’s performance appraisal. I knew it. I knew it all along, Mr. Raghuram.

There are indirect benefits as well — since the demand for firecrackers will go down, the number of juveniles going to school, as opposed to sweatshops, will go up. As well as, women will now be looked up to, respected even, for their judicious use of onions (hey, it’s a skill).

On the other hand, potential rape victims (both men and women), should be careful not to carry onions on their self, in a way that tempts rapists to rape them and steal the onions. Note that ordinary people also will become rapists on the temptation of free onion. If they however face these perps, they should peel the onions layer by layer until they run away. We should take Monsanto’s help to make onions that make these people cry more. Government should consider redeploying the troops from the Chinese/ Pakistani borders to the vast onion fields, whats left of it anyways, so the goons at LeT don’t bomb the onion fields. Government should also arrange for onions to always be transported in armored trucks, with the same security details as has been accorded to Sonia Gandhi (she is the Mahatma of India, right?). Who cares about that turban-ed guy anyways? Speaking of Sonia, might she consider replacing the entire FSB program with free onions?

At the state level, Jayalalitha from Tamil Nadu will return the TASMAC portfolio to free market and take up onion sales as government business. 50% of the onions will be given as subsidies to people under poverty line, defined as 95% of population. Modi ji will use this for his upcoming election campaigns. Lalu bhai will move from general prison to high security, no-parole prison, with no VIP details, until he is found innocent of this sudden price rise.

At an international level, it’s a different story. America has lot of onions (most of them sold by Outback Steakhouse). Obama should be able to export some of these to help their trade, and in exchange demand that his healthcare.gov website be fixed immediately by Nandan Nilekani. He had previously put some cheap BPO guys at task. You can’t blame him because he cannot tell the difference between iOS 6 and iOS 7.0.2 (answer: there is none), heck he cannot even tell the difference between Apple and Android. Since Aadhar is anyways not going on schedule, Nandan can use some extra project to fund his next book. For Obama, doing this will not only help his country’s debt situation, but can also keep the GOPers at bay for some more time. Not to mention, he would have gotten into the good books of Michelle, given that those onion exports will help reduce the calorie intake of Outback customers by at least 20%. She would even forgive her husband for the closet smoking he still indulges in (Hillary has witnessed Barack smoke many times inside the White House, but doesn’t bother telling Michelle, because she knows, more than anyone, that Presidents have done worse things in the same place).

Lastly, the external affairs minister (or communication/ broadcasting minister or whoever comes up with these lofty ideas) should change the slogan to India Peeling. India Shining (by BJP) and Incredible India (by Congress) are too partisan and at any rate, too untrue.

Happy Diwali everyone!

PS: This post has been improvised a few times, but hey, its my blog. Who’s to question it?