Rulers have often been toppled when the poor rose up against high prices for food. One of the seminal events that ended British rule in India was Gandhi’s Salt March against imperial taxes that were driving up the price of that staple seasoning. In a poor country such as India, basics like salt and onions are pillars of national identity, ingredients without which comfort meals, including daal and kebabs, would “lose their self-respect,” as the essayist Nilanjana Roy once put
