There has been continuous rise in fuel prices over last one month and over the last five years, the price of fuel has doubled. Despite fuel having direct relation all the prices, why are people of the country not reacting? Have people lost their sense of belonging to the society? Or are people not feeling the pinch of price rise? Are people become insensitive to all the happenings around them? Are they people earning so much that these trivial matters do not bother them much?
Gone are those days when even for slightest price change in fuel, the general public, the opposition parties and social activists come out on to the roads and conduct protests; sit-in protests, road blocks and Bharat Bandhs. But over the last few years, there seems to be no reaction from the public regarding fuel price hikes. In fact, there seems to be sense of denial to the fact that fuel prices are going up by the day.
Fuel price is directly affecting country inflation and has been the reason for price increase of all the goods from edible oil to electronic goods; the prices have skyrocketed since last three years. Despite all these, the people are accepting it as a way of life and living with the increased price.
“One main thing since last five years is the advent of mobile internet which has made people become indifferent to anything that is happening around them. People are not reacting to real life happenings, they are busy with mobiles, WhatsApp, Facebook, Insta, etc. They believe things are posted on these social media platforms only,” says Dr Anuradha Gupta, clinical psychologist in Secunderabad.
Added to this mobile invasion is the pandemic which has changed the way people live and make living. The idea of work from home concept itself has changed the way people are reacting to things. “With work from home concept, the employees, who are the general public, are busy at home for almost 12-14 hours in a day, they have no time for anything other than their laptops. It would be too much to expect them react to fuel prices. Moreover, these people are not going out and spending money on fuel, so where is the chance for any kind of retreat from public,” mentioned Sai Charan, software employee in Hyderabad.
With no need to spend huge amounts for traveling to office and back home, the work from home culture has made people sit at home; moreover with pandemic people are not traveling even for entertainment and eating out. So where is the reason to get worried about the fuel price hike! On the other hand, even schools are not functioning which has again stopped the reason for people to worry about fuel price hike!
Above all is the sense of fear when the voice of dissent or voice of criticism or even the voice of questioning is heard, the government is not taking criticism easily, instead of the correcting themselves they are attacking whoever raises voice against the government.
Interesting the government has come up a new theory that the tax collected from fuel is used to purchase Covid vaccines… all the vaccine producing companies have tie-up with the Union government and are supply much below the market rate, so this explanation holds goo to very little extent. All said and done, there seems no respite from the continuous fuel price hike!