Saturday, June 7, 2008

Prices of Petroleum products

With the rising prices of petroleum products, inflation has increased a lot worldover. In India, governement provides subsidies to stabilize petroleum prices. The subsidies are around 1.5 lakh crore per year. Double the amount spent in waiving farmers' loan.
Our middle and rich class also get this part of subsidies which is not correct. They can pay. Why should they get subsidized petrol, diesel and Gas cylinder? Per gas cylinder government pays subsidy of rs.210. Is this justifiable?
Every time we read editors of leading newspapers talk about the farm subsidies. Why don't they talk about petroleum subsidies?

The ideal solution to this problem is to have rationing of these products. But the problem with India is that we can not implement any system correctly. So rationing will be another fodder for the corrupts in PDS.

To me its really a dilemma. If government abolish the subsidies entirely it will increase the prices of all the products and which in turn will raise inflation to a historic high. And if they don't abololish subsidies, they will increase taxes which will again affect all the people.

We should immediately start the usage of public transport. Especially based on electricity. But the scarcity of electricity itself is a major cause of concern.

What i can see is that india is certainly heading towards a major economic and energy crisis.

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