1) Citizens’ action can check dollar and fuel rise!
Rising dollar and fuel prices are a major concern for the Indian economy as the rupee breached the lowest mark and petrol prices in the nervous nineties. Indians need to postpone foreign vacations and curb use of private vehicles to soothe the currency as well as fuel prices in the country. The rise in dollar and fuel prices are due to demand and supply which can be corrected by our own actions if we use these resources diligently. Ban on foreign visits (on our own by the people) would boost Indian tourism as well as citizens explore holiday vacations in our country which would give employment to many. Even forgoing the use of private cars once or twice in a week would bring down fuel consumption by 20 per cent that would substantially bring down fuel prices and raise our foreign reserves.
A little bit of sacrifice is needed from citizens in these tough times and every citizen should contribute their bit to strengthen our economy. Force doesn’t really work and the government should not tinker with fuel and dollar pricing mechanism and leave it to citizens to take appropriate actions to help the economy recover from the ongoing turmoil!
– S.N.Kabra
2) How surprising it is!
Every passing day brings a new suspense about the Rafale fighter jets deal, which leaves the people thinking over it again. Before a couple of days, French investigative website Mediapart revealed that Dassault Aviation found it mandatory to have Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as an offset partner and cited documents from Dassault that showed it had no option but to take Reliance as the offset partner. But now just after the visit of Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to France, the clarification came in the backdrop of her visit that Dassault chose Reliance Defence “freely” for the Rafale aircraft deal. It became very difficult to distinguish between truth and lies. Whom one can trust whether PM Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi? Now the situation really demands a proper probe into the fighter jets deal.
– MFU Tandvi
3) An environmentalist died to save Ganga
It is really heartening that G.D. Agarwal, 86, who was on fast to save the Ganga river, died following a heart attack a few days ago. His death is a great loss of a great environmentalist and nature loving human being. He was very curious for a clean Ganga and constantly demanded the government for a special law to deal with pollution and encroachment on the Ganga river and maintaining the environmental flow of the river to prevent pollution. But his demands had not been met. I appeal the government to make his death fruitful to meet his demands for the Ganga river. His death gives a lesson to all of us that to make Ganga pollution free is the most pressing need of the hour, because it had a deep impact in our day-to-day life.
– F.T.Mulla
4) Titli Cyclone hits Andhra severely
It is heartbreaking to see that Cyclone Titli, packing wind speeds of up to 150 km an hour, killed 8 people in Andhra Pradesh and left a trail of devastation in the coastal areas of the state and neighbouring Odisha. According to the Andhra Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), cyclone caused widespread damages, such as road network was extensively damaged and the power distribution network was severely affected. The people of Andhra, as well as Odisha, are facing a rough time for their survival because of this natural disaster. I request the government to help Andhra and Odisha to bring them out of this critical situation which shook the states from within. I also request the centre to provide them with every possible assistance in such a disaster.
– Mohd Usmani
5) Soap companies want to stick to MRP by reducing contents
It refers to news item regarding soap manufacturing companies desiring to stick to Rs 10 tag of Maximum Retail Price by cutting the weight of soap cake because of regularly increasing cost of raw materials like palm oil. Presently Rs 10 MRP price barrier accounts for 35-40 per cent of total Rs 15,000 crore soap market.
But any such system ultimately harms the consumers, because of different companies having different weight slabs for same MRP. The idea should be that consumers may compare effective prices per unit of the commodities by looking at shelves at stores. Practically, no consumer judges effective price per unit by seeing the pack size and MRP printed on packs. Other example is cow milk marketed by Mother Dairy and Amul where Amul devised anti-consumer practice by having 400-mltrs pack to compete with 500-mltrs pack of Mother Dairy.
Department of Consumer Affairs should amend the rules whereby it may be compulsory to pack all commodities in true metric spirit in units of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 gms or mltrs or ltrs or kgs or units only so that consumer may judge comparative prices of a commodity marketed by different companies. Any liberty to pack in units other than suggested ones gives manufacturers cheat consumers through gimmick packaging. Even drug manufacturers cheat consumers through gimmick packaging by packing commonly advertised medicines like cough-lozenges in eight per strip rather than normal 10 because of consumers judge prices per strip without realising a number of lozenges per strip.
– Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
