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Originally Posted by ninjatalli In the end, diesels have a good set of consumers, a lot of them due to the inherent fuel aspects, and a good number of them due to the market situation in our country; and that is not going to change. Please understand, this is not an argumentative stand (to your points), that's a realistic stand. |
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Originally Posted by ethanhunt123 Is Diesel a wonderful choice on environmental/FTD/Patriotic choice ? - Probably NO
Is Diesel a wonderful choice economically if you drive >600-700km a month considering Fuel Prices / Resale Price ? - Hell YES !!
End of the day, people still care about their wallet more than environment, national interest etc. So they will still go out and buy a diesel. |
That's what it boils down to at the end of the day. When I purchased my diesel car the primary reason was cost of my daily running. I was already running somewhere near 12K annually on a petrol car when the government happily decided to pull a little more wool over our eyes by announcing no subsidies any more on petrol while surreptitiously continuing to collect taxes on petrol. As per this link
http://www.hindustanpetroleum.com/Up...dup_petrol.pdf central & state excise/taxes can vary anywhere from Rs 22 to 26 per liter
.
When I came to know about this, apart for my need of clocking higher kilometers I also argued that what in almighty's name has the government provided me in return on those taxes I paid on petrol or would be paying on petrol. Pathetic public infrastructure and transportation, more broken roads, my commute times was multiplied by three times already. Why should I continue using a fuel which only makes me poorer in the long run while the quality of life of the politicos at my expense improves manifold. That was one of the big reasons too I switched to a diesel vehicle and I am sure many are doing that using the same logic. Diesel without any taxes would probably be range bound between Rs 46-50 if all taxes are excluded. Don't want to turn this into a political debate but unless the exorbitantly higher taxes collected on fuels is addressed this skew is going to continue forever.
About 12 years back when I lived in New York City and I am sure it is the same now, I found their public transport system second to none. In fact having a vehicle in the city was a big pain in the wrong place because of exorbitant parking charges. Everybody who worked in Manhattan were more or less commuting from the tri-state area (New Jersey, Connecticut & Pennsylvania) and the other boroughs on a daily basis and they were able to do so because of the fantastic public transportation system. Imagine if all had used cars instead, Manhattan would have turned to debris in half a day.
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Originally Posted by Harbir In the US, research has established that the air pollutant most detrimental to public health, by far, is diesel exhaust. 70% of the cancer risk from air pollutants is from diesel exhaust due to the carcinogenic substances in it. The soot particles not only create smog, the NOx emissions create acid rain, something we have no conciousness of in India. NOx also forms nitric acid vapor that is seriously harmful to lung tissue. |
Indeed there are high health risks involved with all fossil fuels but to my point what has our planners and the supposed geniuses who defecate in designer toilets at taxpayer expense have done to address it. Have they urgently called for an overhaul of public infrastructure and transportation reducing the need of the average citizen to burn fossil fuels.
No. Instead they are trying to posture as great economists only in theory. Theoretically if they want to lower the use of diesel by the private car owners, have they ever called for immediate reduction of the back breaking taxation that petrol users endure so that more diesel users are encouraged to use petrol cars.
No. They are very happy letting the politicos confuse the average citizen and let a, to some extent, pointless debate on petrol vs diesel carry on while their political masters siphon off the taxes collected from the nation. Obviously the beautiful thing is that these so called hallowed economists do not forget to collect their fat consulting fees for their precious advice.
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Originally Posted by Harbir We and our children breathe this air. We and our children lose prosperity when the economy growth is slowed by the macroeconomic effects of fuel subsidies.
Do we want to have a conversation about this and try to raise our consciousness from our individual selves to our collective self?
Because if we're not, then lets admit that all this patriotism and pride in India is all just faltu ki entertainment for us, that in fact we are not interested in what is good for all us as a society, only in what benefits us personally. That is not citizenship and we are poor citizens of the republic.
Mera bharat will be mahan only when Indians care as much about the well being of their fellow citizens as they do about themselves.
We are not there yet. |
The average citizen can take an initiative towards more responsibility for these issues if the government too is supportive and takes some concrete steps. Ideally we should have followed the US model as you have said with negligible taxation on petrol, more stringent emission standards, more stringent fuel efficiency standards as is being done currently, to make folks more prosperous in the long run. Spend the taxes collected more on infrastructure not only in a few cities but B and C tier cities to greatly reduce the use of vital resources by reducing migration and long commute times. Sorry about the rant but our nation seems to have been sold to the corruption Satan a long time back so unfortunately right now it's a free for all
. So much so that when there are honest minded individuals with impeccable records taking up the cudgels to help change the status quo and want something better for us and our children, we the citizens, work overtime aided by our mainstream media to malign them, pull them down, nit pick their faults which the politicos lasciviously cheer on and thank us for doing their job. At the risk of not going OT anymore I will stop here.