The Arithmetic of Price Rise....

by Nisaar Y. Nadiadwala on Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 9:04am

 Today is Bharat Bandh, ‘India Closed’. The reason : Protest against increase in fuel prices. A few rupees increase in petrol prices means few Rupees increase in almost every commodity. Let me explain you like a school teacher’s Arithmetic.

   If the price of petrol has increased by 5 rupees, my vegetable vendor will ask 5 Rupees more for each kilo of onions, Potatoes or tomatoes I buy. It means, if I buy one kilo each I am spending 15 rupees extra. This adds at least 450 Rupees to my monthly expense.  Same is with pulses. It increases an extra 450 Rupees to my expenditure. My milkman will ask at least 2 rupees more on each litre, making me spend 240 Rupees more per month. With the fuel prices up it mean local transports will also increase their fares. That is pickpocketing around 450 Rupees every month from my pocket and that too legally.

    If everybody is increasing the rates then why will the umbrella sellers and rain coats and other commodities not increase their prices? After all they too have to pay more for vegetables, pulses, milk and local transport. So up goes my spending index by a couple of thousand Rupees more, per month.

    So we have Bharat Bandh today. ‘India Closed’. But India will not be locked. The whole nation will play cricket or watch television channels. Nobody will lament for price rise. We will find it difficult to shell out a couple of thousand Rupees to pay the Taxi driver who runs his family on day to day bases of his earnings and the vegetable seller too. We will find milk expensive but we will afford to gulp down ice creams in large number. We will protest against fuel prices but we will continue to buy expensive mobiles and I-pads and I phones

    For a lay reader, protest against corporate greed is a fight against high profits. Little do people understand that they are responsible for the surge of ‘Extreme liberal profit making economy’ where every spender is made to think that he can spend more than is capacity. And that is why the Bharat bandh will not close any chapters of corruption.

     When we give men a taste of mercy, they exult thereat: And when some evil afflicts them because of what their  own hands have sent forth, behold, they are in despair. Surah Rum, chapter 30, verse 36

 Author: Nisaar Nadiadwala can be reached at nisaar_yusuf@yahoo.com

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