Imagine you are visiting a cafe. You sit down at a table. A waiter offers you a menu card. You order an orange juice without sugar. Ten minutes later, the waiter returns and serves you a glass of orange juice. You take a sip. You realize that the juice has sugar. The waiter has either forgotten or ignored your request. Now, if you are someone who is uncomfortable with confrontations, you would probably curse your luck and have the juice with the added sugar. But most people would choose to raise the issue with the waiter. They asked for a product and are paying for it, and they are within every right to question if the establishment fails to provide what was promised.
Forget raising the issue amicably, we have seen people taking to social media, ranting about how they have been deceived by some restaurants, who gave them chicken when they had asked for vegetarian food. Again, the customer has the right to demand what they want and hold the provider accountable if they fail to do so.
This is pretty much how governing bodies work in evolved societies as well. I use the term evolved, instead of developed, because the chatter around development mostly revolves around numbers and percentages and skyscrapers and high-speed trains. A nation can have all these and at the same time have an authoritarian government spying, monitoring, and curbing its people of their basic rights to express. By evolved societies, I am talking about those societies where both the citizens and those who govern are aware of their rights, as well as their duties. The government authorities are rightly seen as representatives of the people who elected them in, and not just as leaders who rule over others.
Years of foreign conquests and ensuing colonization have probably altered the collective psyche of Indians so that we tend to perceive anyone holding a position of authority as absolute rulers, whose actions cannot be questioned or held accountable. Though the British were evicted decades ago, the colonial mindset has lingered, and each forced ‘Saar’ or ‘Ma’am’ only reinforces the same.
Now, let us tweak our analogy a bit. You are on your way to the cafe when you realize your car needs some fuel first. You stop at a fuel station. You ask for petrol. The station gives you petrol, but with added sugar. Or ethanol. People who would complain about added sugar in their juice might turn a blind eye towards the added sugarcane product in their petrol, because the latter is done by the authorities, and we are conditioned to accept whatever they decide.
When the Russia-Ukraine conflict started, India received some flak for importing oil from Russia at discounted rates when Europe and America placed trade restrictions on Russia. Our external affairs minister famously said that Europe needs to get out of the mindset that the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems but Europe’s problems are the world's problems. Indians were elated. We were getting cheaper oil. Logically, it should mean lower fuel prices. But the benefit never trickled down to the citizens. Sadly, nobody complained. Now, the government has achieved their milestone of E20 - blending petrol with twenty percent ethanol. The goal behind the objective is to reduce oil import and make our economy stronger by reducing dependency. The goal may seem commendable but what about the execution?
When someone purchases a car, they pay road tax and registration amount for a period of 15 years, post which we need to get our vehicles tested for extending the lifecycles. A well-built car would run way more years than the initial fifteen years, given timely service and maintenance. The taxes and fees amount to forty-eight percent of the car cost. It means that if we purchase a car for fifteen lakh rupees, about 7 lakhs would be in taxes.
Despite paying such an atrociously high amount of tax, what does the average citizen get in return? India started importing cheaper oil, but the fuel prices stayed the same. India started blending petrol with twenty percent ethanol. Did the petrol price go down by twenty percent? No, it remained the same. The major vehicle manufacturers like Maruti-Suzuki, Hyundai, or Tata Motors have made their engines E20 compatible recently, but what about the cars bought before that? A five-year-old car may not be E20 compliant and using the fuel may cause corrosion to the components, reducing the car’s lifespan. The normal fuel available in fuel stations is now E20, and if you need E10 you would have to go for the special fuels that cost significantly higher.
On top of all this is the ludicrous move by the Delhi state government to place blanket bans on diesel cars that are older than ten years, and petrol cars older than fifteen years. This is when the state-owned decades-old public buses continue to chug the roads, desperately crying for upkeep while emitting thick black puffs of smoke.
Perhaps the government is indirectly forcing us to switch to EVs - but are we there yet? EVs are really promising, but still a rapidly evolving technology. The options in the market are few, with only two options in the affordable under ten lakh category as of today (August 2025). For those cars, the real-life range is about 200 kilometers, enough to give anyone genuine range anxiety. We are still not at a place to consider EVs as the only car in a household unless we can afford to spend over twenty lakhs for a car. The most interesting factor is that much of the power for EVs comes from diesel-powered generators, so the claim of a greener alternative does not hold much water.
Such ill-thought-out and poorly executed policies have the capability to disrupt the economies of millions of Indian households, but there is hardly any chatter around it outside of vehicle-specific YouTube channels or Reddit subs. Neither the mainstream media nor the opposition has taken up the issue to the levels it deserves. This is in a country where a joke said in a stand-up comedy show, or the food preference of a person becomes a topic worthy of prime-time debate on national television.
At a time when news reports of vote theft and voter fabrication are coming out, all we can do is stand up, raise our voices, ask questions, and hold the authorities accountable for their actions.
So true
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