ACT NOT GRUMBLE AGAINST A FUEL PRICE HIKE

The repeated fuel price hikes are a grim reminder of the economic disaster to befall this nation. The spring of modern economic prosperity is doomed to breed insecurity and deprivation. An exploitative and hostile economy that seeks to privatize every sector for profit can only breed poverty and crime. This is exactly what the Father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi had fore warned us about.

The noise against the fuel price hike is a hypocritical response from a segment that gets entertained with a vulgar display of wealth and criminal waste of fossil fuel at a race course. This nation is confronted with a generation that celebrates a global economy and unsustainable models of development but cries foul when it has to bear the natural logical consequences of such decisions. In the same breath it marches to Wall Street and Ram Lila Maidan. This is a sizeable segment that does not think twice before consuming a sandwich costing Rs. 100 and sipping a cup of coffee priced Rs. 60. There is a huge segment that can afford an automobile of Rs. 15 lakhs. Yet they will claim that a litre of petrol for Rs. 80 is unaffordable. Basic economics teaches us that what is in demand in the market will come at a cost. With fall in sales of automobiles, the prices get slashed by 20%. This decrease in prices may even rise to 30% or more.

A fuel price hike may act as a fuel for the political opponents of the Government. But one needs to go to the genesis of this deregulation of fuel prices way back in 2002 which has paved the way for the current crisis. Whipping the Government in power while condoning the contribution of the architects of deregulation and privatisation is unfair. At the end Indian economic policy is a slave of WB and IMF in a globalised economy cheered by the modern generation.

So minimising one's needs and thereby reducing demand in the markets is a healthy response to fighting price rise and inflation. Going in for more cooperative forms of transport and using the public transport system as far a possible will reduce demand on fuel and make Indian markets unattractive to global players. Gandhiji's non-violent Satyagraha and Swadeshi can be the only response to the heavy yoke being cast on the citizens of this country by the exploitative and profit seeking global markets.

-soter