Oil price, of bandhs & reality
This post is spawned out of a twitter series I did a day earlier. Given the nature of the medium that is Twitter, a lot of information gets lost or misinterpreted. As such, I decided to lay out my thoughts in a detailed blog. The Congress party called for a Bandh (or stoppage of all work) in response to the rising fuel prices in India. While the call for bandh failed, it might make sense to look at what is driving the fuel price in India. The objection is that they why can the Government not reduce taxes on fuel, to bring down the price of petrol and diesel. For those who may not know, the taxes charged by central and state government account for about 35-50% of the price of petrol or diesel that the common man buys in retail. While actual mix may change based on several factors such as exchange rate, crude price etc, the charts below will give the reader a good approximation of what it looks like. Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/high-prices-of-petrol-and-dies