Carpool Anyone?

On the bulletin board in my office today, I noticed lots of posts about Car pooling to office from different parts of the city. On a forum where otherwise people are busy fighting Man vs. Woman battles or discussing the food served in various food courts around the campus; every post today was about Car Pooling. Yes you guessed it right. The common man; the middle class or the cattle class whatever they (read the government) may call us; was busy scouting for avenues to save himself from being gutted by the fire caused by the steepest rise in petrol prices.

Long queues outside petrol pumps, bikes and cars alike, some waiting patiently while others pushing and honking agitatedly, to try and save a few bucks before the prices went on a major over drive was the story at each and every petrol pump all over the country. Celebrating the third anniversary of its second term in office, the UPA gifted the people of this country a humongous increase in their monthly expenses! ‘Extortion’ you think? Oh yes most definitely extortion in broad daylight by our so called government and the fact of the matter is we cannot possibly do anything about it.

It angers me looking at how everything is going against the people of this country who are not politicians or celebrities or ones with Swiss Bank Accounts. My Landlord, who I detest from the depths of my heart, has increased my rent thrice in the span of a year. On top of that I have to pay EMI for my own home so that I can finally get out of the pathetic greedy clutches of any godforsaken Landlord forever. As if that wasn’t enough, the prices of fruits, vegetables and other items too are swirling well beyond control. The icing on the cake ofcourse comes every few months with the dastardly government of ours increasing the prices of petrol at their own whims and fancies instead of actually practicing good economics! Where does that leave me and millions of others like me? Sad part is our salary or our income doesn’t increase as much as every other thing that we need to survive. What do we do then Mr Finance Minister?

Every time the government pulls such stunts I feel like we are run by an uneducated and ineffective bunch. Life is getting tougher by the minute with help from those who govern us. What do we do? Sometimes I wonder if the government wants us to leave the country and go settle somewhere else. The take in the IT Industry these days is an onsite term of a decade, in the least, to come back and survive without being burdened by debts and such abrupt and bizarre decisions by the State! Not too patriotic you feel? Perhaps yes but do those ruling us leave us with any other choice literally!

Everything the government does is a travesty. They first increase the prices by 7.5 odd rupees and then pretend to roll back some 2 bucks. Do they think we are fools? We can see right through their play if at all they roll back anything it will only be an act because they would have actually taken care that even the roll back would actually lead to the increase they actually wanted.

The common man is at his wits end trying to figure out what to do. When he curtails his expenses on one end the government makes sure that he ends up paying more in some other. Sometimes I wonder at the tomfoolery they are engaging in. If Indians are finding it difficult to sustain or afford life in their own country, imagine the level to which the government had failed! So what now, instead of Gold we put Petrol in the Lockers to barter it for bare necessities of life!

May be we could switch to bicycles or even horses as a colleague of mine mockingly put forth. But I am sure that even if we do that the Government will find a way to bring in some form of taxes or preach some economic jargon which will lead to even those being overtly expensive and beyond our reach unless we become A. Rajas in our lives too!

PS:All Pictures used in the blog posts are sourced from the internet.