Tomichan Matheikal's blog

On the New Year’s Day, the government of India slashed the price of aviation turbine fuel by 10 percent. This is the second reduction in the price of ATF in a month’s time.  The New Year gift to the common person was a hike in the price of cooking gas.  The price of non-subsidised LPG was hiked by Rs 49.50 per cylinder.  LPG price was hiked on 1 Dec by Rs 61.50.  Prior to that, rates were increased by Rs. 27.5 per cylinder on November 1. The flight ticket rates have not changed though ATF rates were cut.  The benefit does not trickle down to the passengers.  The corporate sector harvests the benefits.  The trickle down effect of neoliberalism is a myth.  When the price of petroleum shot up to $140 per barrel, Dr Manmohan Singh managed to keep the price of petrol in India at Rs 72 per litre by providing subsidies so that the common people would not be taxed too much.  Now when the international price hovers around $37 the prices of...

Courtesy The Hindu I happened to stop by a wayside dhaba in the fringes of Delhi this evening.  While waiting for someone there, I watched the cooks prepare tandoori rotis and other tandoori items including chicken tikka and paneer puran.  If you actually watch how these dishes are prepared, especially in the summer heat of Delhi, you won’t ever eat it.  Human sweat mingles with the dusty dough and sliced paneer liberally.  One of the tandoor operators approached the cashier and asked for drinking water.  “Order a bottle of mineral water,” he demanded.  Obviously there was no good drinking water in the restaurant – at least not good enough for the insider!  The cashier fumed, “How can I buy water?”  He was not the proprietor, after all.  He was just another employee earning a pittance from the boss who would be riding the bullet train promised by the Prime Minister’s new rail budget. The tandoor operator went back to wo...

The prices of food and other essential things keep rising.  Newspapers and TV channels celebrate it in catchy headlines.   But the number of private vehicles on the roads keeps increasing indicating that people have money to buy them and fill their tanks with fuel.  The number of people spending time in expensive shopping malls and multiplexes have not decreased.  So who is affected by the inflation and price rise? Economist and Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, delivered a speech recently to the AFL-CIO convention and said: “ 95% of the gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the upper 1% (in the USA).  The rest — the 99% — never really recovered. “We have become the advanced country with the highest level of inequality, with the greatest divide between the rich and the poor . ” The situation is not confined to the world’s most “advanced country.”  It is replicated in every country which follows the same economic policies, including India...

Finally Ms Sheila Dikshit has spoken the truth: the government exists for the rich; the poor will only get alms.  She has fixed the amount at Rs4 per day per person.  Rs600 will be enough to meet the food requirements of a family of 5 persons, according to didi.  They can buy daal, rice and wheat in that amount.   Her party is annoyed with her for speaking the truth about the government’s intentions. We should be grateful to didi for giving us an indication of things to come. In the neoliberal system which India has accepted lock, stock and barrel, the real rulers are the capitalists.  The government exists only for the sake of formulating policies which will enable the capitalists to take over the resources of the country at minimum rates. The Economic Survey 2009-10 stated without mincing words that “prices are best left to the market.” There will be no welfare government anymore.  No welfare schemes, no subsidies, no Public Distributi...

The Planning Commission of India thinks a person in India can live on about $0.6 (in rural areas) or $0.7 (in cities). But look at what people in power are earning. Who drives India's economy? For whom, for what, are they driving it?

This is part of a report in today's [21 Sep 2011] Times of India .  According to the report, the Planning Commission of India has recommended $0.7 (in cities) and $0.6 (in rural areas) as the cut off for determining the level of poverty in India. India is supposed to be the Superpower in 21st century. Who makes the rules of Superpowers? Who decides who is poor? Do you have a boss who sits in an air-conditioned room and gossips the whole day while he pays you Rs32 per day (the recommended rate?)

Both these pictures were taken last night at about 11 o'clock.  If you take a ride at night through the capital of the world's largest democracy, a country whose multi-billionaires are rising in number with generous assistance from the government in the form of tax exemptions and so on, you will find hundreds of homeless people sleeping on the roadside.