Thousands in India protest high food prices

The demonstration in New Delhi was the latest in a wave of protests sweeping across the world, including the Middle East and Africa, ignited by a worldwide spike in food prices.

India, Asia's third-largest economy and home to more than a billion people, has been grappling with double-digit food inflation. Hundreds of millions of poor have been hit the hardest.

In one of the largest anti-government protests in New Delhi in recent years, at least 50,000 people representing trade unions from the country's political parties, marched through the center of the capital toward the parliament building.

In a sea of red flags and hats bearing their union name, protesters chanted slogans and carried banners calling on the government to provide food security.

"Prices will now kill the common man," read one banner.

"We get paid 100-125 Rupees ($2-3) a day. How are we going to survive on this if prices are so high?" said Kailash Sain, who had traveled to the capital from the western state of Rajasthan.

"We have come here so that our voices reverberate inside the house (parliament) and they can see what pain the common man is going through," said another demonstrator, Akhil Samamtray from western Orissa state.

Protesters arrived by bus and train from all over the country and the numbers were expected to rise; Kazinform cites Arab News.

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