Inflation and What Not
by All these years we have only heard of high value inflation figure. Sometimes it does come down and oscillates between two figures. Recently in India, the figure has gone far down. We have a negative inflation figure in India as of now. Do you understand what it means to a common man?
Everything is upside down, isn’t it?
There is a rumour that the petrol price may be hiked once again, which means that every item of daily use will go up in value not with standing the fact that inflation value is a little less than -1.
Here is another anomaly. When petrol priceis increased, the public transport ticket rate goes up and all the taxis and auto rickshaws too raise their rate. This is understandable. But some months back, the crude oil price came down and a barrel was selling at $ 47. [Imagine from $147 to a mere 47 !]So, the Indian government reduced the petrol price by Rs 5 per liter or so. But out taxi men and auto rickshaws enhanced their price all the same. Their formula is, it makes no difference whether the petrol price rises or falls, the rate per KM must keep going up. “Why?” I asked a rickshaw man. He sounded more knowledgeable to me. You see sir, the inflation rate is going on the negative side, so our charges must be on the positive side, mustn’t they? Only then the graph will balance. Like before I didn’t understand a thing but I shelled out more money for the trip.
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