India now ranks fifth in the world in total energy consumption after US, China, Japan, and Russia. The government decided to decontrol prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas as part of a plan to move towards a market-determined price regime. Prices of petrol hiked by Rs 3.50 per litre, diesel by Rs 2 per litre and kerosene by Rs 3 per litre. Cooking gas will be costlier by Rs 35 per cylinder. The crude prices have increased by nearly 10 per cent since end-December 2007. The rising oil prices are (this is a cartoon from www.outlookindia.com

BY SANDEEP ADHWARYU)building up an underlying inflationary pressure in an country where 410 million people live on less than $ 1.25 per day

The finance minister admitted to have imposed petroleum duties to the extent of Rs 1,08,000 crores. Of this, he stated that Rs 24,000 crores will be transferred to all the states put together. This leaves Rs 84,000 crores with the centre. He claimed that the states put together have imposed petroleum duties to the extent of Rs 72,000 crore. Therefore, all the states put together now will be receiving Rs 96,000 crore while the centre gets only Rs 84,000 crore. Thus implying that the state governments bear a greater responsibility for burdening people than the centre! – this is not the problem of the poor, I think so, who gets more? State or center? Their problem is hunger. A recent study shows 6 Indian states have more poverty than sub Saharan Africa.

The entire burden of Rs 84,000 crore imposed by the centre is transferred to the people through a hike in prices. The Rs 96,000 crore is the cumulative amount of taxes in all the 28 states of India. This, on an average, comes to Rs 3428.57 crore per state. This is the burden that falls on the shoulders of the people living in the respective states due to taxes by the state governments, as compared to the burden of Rs 1,08,000 crores of central taxes that falls on all the people.

Countries	Current Inflation (%)
New Zealand	3
UK	2.9
Australia	2.5
EU	0.6
Japan	-0.3
US	-0.4
India	13.91

Our Indian democracy is of the corporates, for the corporates and by the UPA. This price rise and decontrol of petrol only help the private players like Reliance, Essar, shell etc.

They are telling us that public sector oil companies are in loss. Please check this. This is from ONGC’s site.

Annual net profit of ONGC increases 4%, from Rs. 16,126 Crore to Rs.16,768 Crore in FY’10.

Premium gasoline price in Pakistan - 67.74 Pakistan Rupee = 37.01421 Indian Rupee

Kerosine price in Pakistan - 64.85 Pakistan Rupee = 35.43507 Indian Rupee

Diesel price in Pakistan - 61.35 Pakistan Rupee = 33.52261 Indian Rupee

Petrol price in Sri Lanka - 100 Sri Lanka Rupee = 39.89257 Indian Rupee

The money you pay to buy a litre of petrol or diesel consists of a large component of central and state taxes.

Taxes account for almost 50 per cent of the cost of petrol.

Without the taxes, petrol and diesel both would cost about Rs 26-27 per litre!