Monday, April 04, 2005

A jewel called "Petrol" ...

Gone are those great days when we used to run vehicles at a modest price of Re. 1/- for nearly 3 Kilometers (approx. 2 miles). It used to be a pleasure to run the vehicles on the road. But hey!! Don't you forget that in those days, the vehicular emission was too much for the atmosphere but were lucky enough to escape it because the vehicular population was at the least.

Slowly things started growing, both vehicular traffic and also the price of Petrol. The introduction of Euro-I standards was the first step to reduce pollution. The sulphur and lead compounds in Petrol were reduced to a level which they thought would in-turn help reduce pollution and hence preserve the environment. This prevailed for a period of around 2 years.

Then researchers came up with another set of standards, the EURO-II !! With this standard in force, petrol became unleaded and with all the anti-knocking agents removed from the fuel, all the petrol engines have a reduced life of only 65-75% of their original "could-be" life. What happened? Lots of vehicles on road. How? A person buys a vehicle, rides/drives it for 30K kilometers, sells it in the used vehicle market and someone else runs that vehicle while the first person goes for another new one while he can afford. Increase in vehicular population. Even if one vehicle of Euro-II standards emits less harmful gases than the ones which were before EURO-I, but the population on the roads makes things look a lot worse than before!

Well.... Now in 2005, the EURO-II has been taken over by EURO-III and still the fuel prices are on a rise. The fuel price has increased by Rs.2/- in the last week. Yet again, there was a flood in every single fuel pump in and around Bangalore in the two days before the price hike. At approximately around Rs. 46/- Fuel price has become dearer by around 16/- in the past 2-3 years. Thank God that it is only 16/-. Some improvements by the State Govt. and also by the Central Govt. kept the fuel prices steady over the past few hikes.

The people who can earn around 40K a month can barely afford a B-Class car today if he/she prefers daily travel to & from the office today unless of-course the organisation offers to bear 100% of the fuel bills of the person. This jewel called "Petrol" is not anymore anybody's domain and is probably slowly shifting to a SPONSORSHIP domain or RICH man's domain!!!

Try This : Kaalavannu Tadeyoru [Apthamitra]

1 comment:

Akshay said...

todays wars are for the jewel u mention. in years to come water will be the next jewel if we dont take care of our resources well..