How many cooking gas cylinders do you use a year or how many days one
cylinder lasts for you! The frenetic calculations must be raging at the moment
in households or in the minds of housewives across the length and breadth of India! The curious
spectacle of the 7th cylinder must be getting embedded in various
brains. But the first story first.
After months of introspection, retrospection and brainstorming the Government
of India today took the courageous decision of hiking diesel prices by 12% or 5
rupees per litre. This is very courageous basically on two grounds; first,
diesel has been the basic fuel of India used in various activities
meant largely for the poor and the farmers and second, with the political opposition
hounding for controlling inflation and the pressure of big and bigger scams building
all the time the ruling coalition government was in a tight corner.
The fiscal deficit of the government that has been growing due to the
heavily subsidized diesel, cooking gas and kerosene almost threatened a credit
rating downgrade. Increasing crude oil prices in the international market and
continuous fall in the Indian Rupee value against the US dollar the oil imports bill
was growing with the oil companies making huge losses on a daily basis. The
business experts across India
hail this decision as a positive step forward to further reforms and a boost to
the markets, and they appeal to the government not to resort to rollback. But the
opposition political parties and the allies are already threatening a
countrywide agitation and demand an immediate rollback. Well, the politics of
economics or business is an old story in India. But now to the curious
story.
The government found the decision to hike cooking gas, petrol and kerosene
prices too politically risky at the moment and therefore decided to leave them
untouched. But with a condition. There will a cap of six gas cylinders per year
per household at the subsidized prices and if any family has to go for the 7th
cylinder its market price which is nearly double will have to be paid. Since the
year considered is the April-March financial year all households can have only
three more cylinders till March, 2013. Any exception for the poor families has
not been specified so far.
So then, single, married, nuclear family, joint family, large families…beware!
Keep guard over your kitchen and on what you eat! Happy calculations!
