November 12, 2011 admin

The Foolish (Fuelish) Way

A.S.Bhalla*andG.S.Bhalla*

The govt. policy of liberal and soft loans for cars is definitely  a bad policy.Thinking  about  present ( bad) government policy  about car loans ; following things deserve attention;First   the loan to finance cars  is  given out of Indian savings  that deserves to be provided/ diverted (further) to  priority areas  ; like  houses for poor Indians; and  the

education of meritorious  ones.

Secondly  cars run on foreign fuel (rather precious foreign exchange) . To encourage use of  cars  is obviously a bad economic policy. It is worthy of mention here that India is the third largest importer of this "burdensome item".

 Further  cars are being produced with foreign collaboration that suits the ‘dominant’ player-the rich foreign collaborator and his country in terms of huge profits earned from the sale of cars in India.

In addition to it   the  purchase of car results into demonstration affect on friends, relatives, neighbours and they have to buy a car under social pressure even when they ill afford it. It has serious adverse social implications.
Then India does not have even decimal one percent of the motor able roads according to international standards resulting into serious accidents and the loss of so many precious human lives every day.

Also surveys have showed that eighty percent (80%) of the cars have only one person-the one who is driving it.

 Is it fair to use 21 horse power engine to transport ONE person?.

 Is it fine that a person is moving from one place to another not on the space that occupies one seat BUT in space equivalent to that of living room?

 It is definitely an unethical and bad practice.

 In Singapore, a car is challaned if it has less than four occupants. Why can’t India follow this way? In China substantial majority of the population prefers to use bicycle. Even a rich country like United States of America (U.S.A.) has on an average 2.5 bicycles per

family which is more than that in poor country like India which ill afford a luxury called a car.

 We Indians are too status conscious. How can we risk venturing out on a bicycle lest our fall prestige is hampered!

This mindset of Indians needs to be altered  through active, focused measures by the media, the government and the environmentalists or by means of pollution taxes. For instance of the money spent on fuel, ten percent should be charged as pollution tax./ green tax / ecological tax/ threat to civilsation tax.

 Motor cars are a show of vanity rather vulgarity ; To quote the saint of Pingalwara-Bhagat Puran singh(it pains me to use the word late with his name)
Finally I would call it a foolish(fuelish) way –that needs t o be reversed immediately OR we are digging our own graves by learning nothing from the history of the previous civilizations.

 Arnold Toynbee a noted historian who studied the symptoms of rise and fall of 21 civilizations concluded that these civilization were destroyed less because of foreign hordes AND fundamentally because of the neglect of ecological concerns while pursuing the foolish/mad race for so called economic development. The civilization is already on the brink of extinction because of the extreme exploitation of nature in the name  of development. Noted environmentalist of the CHIPKO movement  fame Sunder Lal Bahuguna  states without  mincing words that we have already exploited the nature to hilt and the question  no longer is that of striking a balance between economic development and ecological destruction that of  survival or extinction.

—-A.S.Bhalla*and G.S.Bhalla*
(* The writers are the students of commerce in the department of Commerce and Business Management in the capacity of post graduate student and professor respectively.)

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