Bangalore: Since past few years, petrol rates are continuously increasing in India as a result of which, the general public are blaming the ruling Modi government in the Centre. Everyone assumed that once Narendra Modi takes over the government, the International Crude oil prices would come down at least ½ times. But in practical, the Modi government office has made no difference to the oil (petrol and diesel) consumers. Even various newspaper portrayed that petrol and diesel reached it’s highest price point in Modi’s rule for which the BJP replied, “It is mistakenly reported in some media channels that the price of petrol is highest ever, whereas the all time high retail selling price in Delhi was Rs. 76.6 per litre on 14th September 2013.”
We should first remember that this huge rise in petrol didn’t happen in a single night. The Narendra Modi government introduced the “daily price revision system” in the mid of June 2017. Because of which, we are facing a small rise in prices of the commodities almost every day and this has led to such a high increase in petrol price today. This in turn has resulted in the cost to the consumer going up tremendously. To state an example, between July 1, 2017 to September 12, 2017, the price of petrol went up by Rs. 5.18 per litre.
When comparing to other states, the consumers in Delhi are little lucky as they have to pay little less for both petrol and diesel. This difference is mainly because the Value Added Tax (VAT) charged by the Delhi government is comparatively less than that by the Maharashtra government, even though the excise duty levied by the central government is the same in both, Maharashtra and Delhi.
Price comparisons between India, US or other western nations:
In the US, the per capita income fluctuates around $ 60,000 while the average price of the petrol (gasoline, in their terms) is $ 0.70 dollar per litre. Almost in all developed western countries, the price of the petroleum products are at the similar level.
We can think, that is because of rich capitalist nations can afford to keep the petroleum prices low. But in the case of China, a country that we aspire to compete with and beat economically, and where the per capita income is slightly above $ 15,000 dollars, it sells petroleum products to it’s citizens at an average price of 6.5 Chinese Yuan (1 Chinese yuan equals 0.15 US dollar). That works out to less than a dollar per litre.
In the case of India, where the per capita income is little above $ 6,000, still, our government sells petroleum products to it’s citizens at a price of $ 1.25 (Rs. 80 at the current exchange rate).
Our Indian “sarkar” even turns out to be the worst among the poor south Asian nations. In Pakistan itself, where many of our ‘hyper-nationalists’ deride as a basket case. The pakistan government is more considerate to it’s citizens than ours. Pakistan, whose per capita income is around $ 5,500 (less than that of India) sells petrol to it’s citizens at 71 Pakistani rupees, which works out to just $ 0.67.
Even considering the case of Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bangladesh, our government’s extortion has no match with any other country. The recent scenario in the country very well proves that the Indian government is, of course, a perfect example of burdening the citizens with its exorbitant taxes and extreme gasoline prices than any other nation in the world.
