OH DEAR FUEL STOP BEING SO CRUEL!



Life is like a roller coaster ride. Ups and downs are a part and parcel of the game. If one thing, however, comes close to fitting the bill of a rather unpredictable roller coaster, the fuel prices in India would win hands down.

The Modi government has done quite a few things, but now, it just seems like it’s teasing us around. Did it slash the fuel prices as promised? Yes, it did. Did it also hike it? Yes.

And there, it has done it again. Tuesday’s revision marked an eighth consecutive hike in petrol and diesel prices across the nation. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday said the government was looking at ways to keep the rising fuel prices in check.

With effect from 6 am, May 22, for Delhites, petrol would cost Rs. 76.87 per litre, while diesel would cost 68.08 per litre.

Mumbaikars would end up paying Rs 84.70 for petrol and Rs 72.48 for diesel. Kolkata will shell out Rs 79.53 for petrol and Rs 70.63 for diesel. 

Meanwhile, Guwahatians, will have to pay Rs. 79.03 per litre for petrol and Rs. 71.07 per litre for diesel.
 “The sudden changes affect our daily life. Now prices of other household things will increase and we have to bear with it too,” Bhargav Kalita, a Guwahati-based daily-wage earner, said. “These prices never go down when fuel rates are slashed. They just scale higher and higher,” he added.

Industry chamber FICCI has called for the government to urgently reduce fuel excise duties. "At a time when the Indian economy is on a recovery path, rising oil prices are again posing a high risk to India's economic growth trajectory," FICCI said in a statement.

Rising crude oil prices in the international market and strength of the dollar against the rupee has dictated domestic petrol and diesel prices in the past few weeks. While the crude oil prices are near their 2014 highs the rupee has weakened by more than 6 per cent so far this year. On Monday, US crude futures rose 0.8 per cent to $71.83 per barrel, near last week's three-and-a-half-year high of $72.30 while Brent crude futures notched up 0.8 per cent to $79.10 per barrel. Last week, crude oil prices had crossed $80 per barrel for the first time since November 2014.
 “My entire budget goes for a toss. It’s not only the fuel prices, but also the commodities of other products shots up with fuel price hike. Be it vegetables or transportation, it’s the consumers, who loses everything,” Deepak Chatterjee, who works with a leading daily in Guwahati, said.

In 2014, the highest price that petrol had scaled was Rs 82.07 per litre. The lowest prices that motorists paid – and happily at that – was Rs 62.75 a litre on March 10, 2016. After this date petrol prices never fell below Rs 65 a litre, continuously marching upwards.

Currently, petrol and diesel rates in the country are determined broadly by global crude oil and rupee-dollar forex rate. That is part of a daily system of fuel price revisions adopted in June last year. India imports more than 80 per cent of its annual oil requirement.

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