FEBRUARY 28, 2010

Preposterous act by Opposition

Padmini Sundaram, Advocate

THE opposition by walking out has proved that they don't deserve to be in the parliament. the highest legislature in the country. So much of hue and cry for just 1 rupee hike in excise duty on petrol and diesel. How can this be called anti-poor by the opposition? Where is it affecting the poor? Whatever cascading effect it will have, still it will not affect the common man the way it is proclaimed by the opposition...

In fact, some positive changes as listed below can emerge from this price increase which will help save fuel for future which is the need of the hour not only in our country but globally. A little effort to save fuel from our side will do a lot good to ourselves as well as to our polluting environment.

- Encourage people to go for car pooling thereby saving petrol/diesel keeping in mind the high cost of fuel. This will also help in reducing pollution in the environment to a great extent and also traffic congestion on the roads.

- School/college going children should be encouraged to use bicycles rather than Scotties/mopeds etc for short distance travel and buses for long distance travel.

- It is definitely not goods news for those people who have a chain of cars, for example, many a times we come across a family of four consisting of parents and 2 children all adults having 4 cars. May be they can learn a lesson or 2 from this hike in fuel prices as well as hike in car prices especially large cars and start using cars in a more efficient way thereby helping themselves and the environment.

If people reduce usage of their vehicles because of this hike in petrol/diesel price, then it is a good sign for our already congested roads and we will also be contributing towards reducing pollution. More important we will be saving fuel which is going to be a scarce commodity in the near future.

Therefore, the fuel price increase will only do more good than bad. In such a situation, the pre-planned walk-out by the opposition only shows that they deliberately ignored and failed to appreciate the reforms and relief's offered in the budget which aimed at long term inclusive development and growth of the nation.