Prices of petrol are up by at least Rs. 5 over the country from midnight today.
I went to a petrol bunk to check out the madness, and it took me exactly 30 minutes to stand in a line of 20 cars or so, filling up their tanks. Some of them filled just 10 liters. To save Rs. 50, they idled for around 20 minutes, which should take out a substantial part of the saving in the first place. Plus there were fights, people trying to butt in, etc.
I was part of it all, though at least I was aware the maximum I would save was Rs. 125 (25 liters). The wait probably took more than Rs. 25 off anyhow, and I lost at least Rs. 50,000 worth of time in terms of playing with my son in the park. Net net, it was a horrible deal. Never doing it again.
The revised price list is such:
Delhi – Rs.63.37
Kolkata – Rs.67.71
Mumbai – Rs.68.33
Chennai – Rs.67.22
Gurgaon – 1 real estate “investment” property + 1 cow + Rs. 66. (just kidding. The cow is optional)
We need a diesel price hike too, immediately. Let’s hike all the prices. Eventually if the government want to reduce prices, it can reduce taxes on these fuels (more than half of the petrol price is tax). But it won’t do that, so we all have to use lesser petrol. I’m darn lucky that I work mostly out of home.
Raising prices will show up in higher inflation in the near term. But is this enough to slow usage? I don’t know – it will take a diesel, kerosene and LPG price hike to cut things down. For me, a single cylinder of LPG lasts about 6 weeks, so I pay about Rs. 250 per month; I would gladly pay 30-50% higher because in the end the subsidy is also going out of my pocket some other way.
