The government is shooting holes in all the ancient wisdom that ever governed lives: what goes up must come down, they used to say. But this year's example that the Union government is setting is trying very hard to shatter all historic records and make us believe that what goes up can only go higher. Yes. Fuel prices. 

So there goes all the good food and all the nights out on the town. Watch, all you little punks, as you start measuring your relationships in petrol-rupees. 'No hotstuff. Not tonight. It's not buying the condoms i'm worried about, It's just that i'd rather wait till...to be with you' or 'I guess this is goodbye, darling. I can't spend so much on getting to our hangout. I'd rather stay inside and...'; and i bet the government prudes want us to fill in those blanks with 'we get married' and 'study', but the truth lies in a somewhat different direction. It seems like the babus are using fuel to control our morality. And the rate at which we're going, it might just work...

Jokes aside.

India pays the highest prices in the world for fuel. Out of which a whopping 40% goes into the government coffers. And where does it show? I don't see it showing on the roads (or for that matter on the shoddy signboards and grantees that spell out grim things like Speed Thrills But Kills and Keep Pune Clean And Green-- in bizarrely capitalised words). I don't see it spewing out in spanking new buses for the public transport system (the only spewing happening there is the outward belching of thick billious clouds of noxious, black smoke). I definitely don't see it in implementing a better screening process to sift through the mass of blooming idiots that crash through testing and still get licenses! 

Well, bottom line is that we don't see it. 

Something tells me that this is just the beginning of a slow, painful death that the common man will have to die. The food prices will climb, vegetables will be more expensive, the farmer will be crippled by the cheaper goods offered by companies that have theiR own fuel sources. Reliable (i hope you see the Reason for all this syntax), to us. KilleRs to the subaltern. And this is only one of the giants that will start stampeding out the little man.

Unless there is some phenomenal growth in the value of the Rupee, we can gaze longingly at Venezuela's (close to) 0.3$ a litre price and moan and mope and die of jealousy...

Unless we invoke the power of the once mighty Anna...not the fasting kind...the sort where four of them could buy you anything. And every Rupee that was built out of those small powerful Annas was worth more than we can ever even dream of....

They're using fool to make poor fuels out of us...or something like that.