The LPG Tangle

         The country is boiling with the problems connected with #LPG. The price goes on increasing, limiting the quota per year haunts the users and linking the cylinder with #Aadhar increases the worries. The ordinary people are in arms against the Government. Political leaders encourage them blindly, with a view on their votes. Why is there so much confusion related to this?

       This is exactly the technique used by the #corporate lobby. First of all, they introduce you to some alternative for the conventional system, get you accustomed to it, encourage you to use it through demonstrations and list of advantages. Then they gradually wean you away from the conventional and make you dependent on the new. After this, they preach about the harms done by the conventional and make legal claims against its use and get it banned. They manage to force the government to fall in line with them by hook or crook.

           It is now that they begin to show their fangs. The new system that was introduced at a very low price begins to become dearer and dearer day by day. By this time, they have established a sort of monopoly. They get the government to allow them to decide the prices by the companies and they increase it at their will and pleasure. People have no other go but to buy it at the price decided by them. If by chance somebody attempts to curtail them from doing so, the companies speak of loss and damages and establish their rights.

         Now let us examine the situation in the context of LPG. When LPG was introduced for the first time, it was dead cheap. Then, when people began to use it, firewood was discouraged and gradually banned. The only other alternative was kerosene, which is already priced high and scarcely available. When LPG became the best substitute, the companies began to increase the price. They persuaded the government to give them the right to decide the price. When the quota of LPG was restricted, they got the people to resist it. When it was proposed to link LPG with Aadhar, they have so far managed to stall that also.

         Does anyone know the grammar and syntax behind all this? The companies were reaping a fantastic harvest when there was no restriction on the number of cylinders. Along with regular users, black- marketeers also thrived. The selling agents of LPG profited immensely from this, with the silent concurrence of the oil companies. For them, it was just the number of cylinders sold and the profit arising out of it, whether it was in regular market or black.

          Restricting the number of cylinders to six per year told on their profit through curtailing the scope for black-marketing; Linking Aadhar with LPG would weed out the illegal sale and restrict the supply only to genuine users. Does anyone know the number of cylinders sold now and what it would be if spurious sale of domestic cylinders is weeded out? Nobody would tell you this statistics.  There would be a sharp fall in the profits of the oil companies. Now they would go to any extent to inflame the people against the government to act in the companies' favour. The people who have been forced to go in for LPG will fall an easy prey to the tactics of the companies.

          This analysis is true about all petroleum products and all fields wherever monopoly exists. The situation was the same when India had only two car companies and only one telecom service. The successive governments did nothing to bridle the oil companies or to encourage domestic production of LPG. Those who are fleeced on account of this are the poor people of India who have to pay through their nose and to vote for similar inactive people in the next elections too.