Laidback response in TN to fuel price hike
With fuel prices at an all-time high forcing the poor to curtail spending, it is fair to expect huge political protests across India demanding immediate relief. But surprisingly there is little action on the streets in Tamil Nadu or elsewhere. While the second wave of Covid locked up many parts of the nation for weeks and restricted political activity, the situation has since improved. Yet, the opposition doesn’t seem to have whipped up a storm to build pressure on the government, except for many posts on social media. When Parliament’s Monsoon Session opens next week, there surely will be some drama on the matter, but will it force a rethink? As things stand, India appears to have reconciled itself to a long phase of high fuel prices, since the international crude market is nowhere near cooling.
The cost of fuel was already creeping up when the DMK was fighting the state polls a few months ago while in the opposition, so it promised to lower the price of petrol by Rs 5 a litre and diesel by Rs 4 per litre in its manifesto. Topping it up was the promise of subsidising cooking gas by Rs 100 per cylinder. But compulsions of realpolitik dawned on the party after it came to power, as a combative state finance minister P T R Palanivel Thiagarajan indulged in hairsplitting, saying the manifesto did make the promise but did not say the rates would be cut immediately. The DMK’s allies, too, could not be bothered about it, indulging as they did in token protests that lacked conviction.
While Covid’s pressures on the state and Central finances are well understood, high fuel rates have a cascading effect on commodity prices, including cost of household essentials, pushing them that much away from the people in distress. Making a trade-off between offering support to the common people to rebuild their livelihood torn apart by Covid and raising revenue for reviving the economy through high government spending is decidedly tough. But they are not mutually exclusive. The need is to find resources to strike the right balance to tamp down prices while reviving the economy. One hopes the collective wisdom of Parliament can find a way out.