Increased Fuel Price And A Cursed Nation

At last government has hiked the fuel prices by Tk 5 to Tk 8 per litre. The new rate will take effect from 12:00am Monday. As per government statement “to avoid huge budget deficit pressure due to subsidy and adjustment with neighboring country” are the main reasons behind this. Like good citizens we all shall obey this government order in spite of various problems imposed on our livings.

Now if we place anti logic before governments’ “budget deficit logic” we will see Government’s logic is not strong enough to justify their decision or order. Government said fuel price hiked to avoid huge deficit pressure due to subsidy for oil. As an obvious result of this decision hauling cost will be increased for each and every product. As a result, we will observe anarchy in our kitchen market and public transport sector. A monstrous amount of people will lose buying power and will stand in the queue of Open Market Sell (OMS) trucks. Since number of poor will increase and price level also rise at higher, government will have to increase number of OMS trucks and increase subsidy in food sector. Ultimately government will fail to come out of subsidy, to avoid budget deficit. But we the general people have to suffer, have to be poorer.

All governments of Bangladesh try to adjust fuel price with India. But they are very reluctant to adjust law and order situation, democratic system, local government, quality of education, accountability of ministers and bureaucrats, etc with those of India. To avoid oil smuggling we need to strengthen our border security, oil price hiking is not the only solution.

During earlier fuel price hike of this year we observed chaos in public transport sector as transport companies shamelessly increased fares. In spite of endless sufferings of general public our government was sleeping and allowing those illicit activities. After colossal criticism on print and electronic media as well as public’s frustration, government fixed up transport fare. Then we hoped next time government will take preemptive measures to avoid such unlawful practice or at least fix up new fare before implementing price hiking order/decision. Increased fuel price will be effective after two hours (while writing), but we are yet to get any such initiatives.

From tomorrow morning (Monday) we will bear increased transport fare; will buy everything at increased price; but our income will not be increased from then. We experienced it during all of our previous governments and we are becoming used to this. We gift our political parties “Two-Third Majority”, “Land Slide Victory” and they play with our fortune. May be as a nation we are cursed to live in a state of “Cow Boys and Jokers”. We were in a state of “Cow Boys and Jokers” and we are in the same.