Depressing decisions

With rising prices of POL products, gas and power, PTI must stay rest assured about its popularity graph going down

The intermittent spells of government announcements to increase the prices of petroleum products, gas and electricity are now a routine phenomenon. This indeed goes well with the remarkable resilience of the masses. In another jolt to the people who are already crushed under the pressures of rising inflation and continuous depreciation of local currency, the PTI government on Wednesday announced a 10 per cent increase in the prices of almost all the major POL products. Ironically, the decision came only days before the festival of Eidul Azha leaving the people frustrated with another economic shock eroding whatever the financial capacity they had to make ends meet.

Little realising that how badly these increases in petroleum, gas or electricity prices impact the day-to-day life of the common man, the government would conveniently attribute it to the on-going appreciation of dollar against the rupee and the fluctuations in the international market. An immediate effect of the upward change in petrol prices will be an increase in transport fares and freight charges for. Increase in prices of HSD naturally has a direct impact on transport and agriculture sectors. Deprived of the gas facility, these are the poor people in remote rural areas who rely on kerosene while it is the industrial sector that consumes LSD and would conveniently pass on the cost impact on the buyers of its products. The increases not only hit at kitchen maintenance cost and prices of edible items, it leads to escalation in the prices of agricultural produce and cost of transportation.

If the prices of POL products, gas and electricity keep on increasing, the PTI leadership must stay rest assured about its popularity graph going down. Besides if you take essential and necessary commodities out of the reach of common man, people turn to unfair and illegitimate means to earn a living and sustain life and this give birth to a crime-infested society. Remember William Blake saying: A dog starv’d at his Master’s gate/Predicts the ruin of the State.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2019.

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