Rice and Rolls-Royce

A rice tycoon has become a clout chaser, posting ostentatiously on social media about his extravagance ad nauseam.

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He has been TikToking his newly acquired Rolls-Royce to boost his ego and online visibility. What he does with his own money should not be anyone else's concern, one can argue. This argument is not without some merit. But the large-scale rice millers are making a vulgar display of their wealth in this manner while paddy cultivators, stuck neck-deep in debt, are mortgaging their household goods, jewellery and agricultural equipment to make ends meet, and the public is complaining of unconscionably high prices of rice. This shows that there is something terribly wrong with the mechanisms in place to safeguard the interests of rice growers and consumers; it has also given the lie to the big-time millers’ oft-repeated claim that they are just keeping their heads above water, and they are justified in increasing the prices of rice from time to time.